Nature Versus Nurture
by StoriesAreMagic
Summary: When Lord Garmadon finds out that the ninja were temporarily turned into children, he comes up with a bold new plan for defeating Wu and his students, a plan that could change the battle forever. (Deaging fic. Takes place in Season Two, between "Child's Play" and "Wrong Place, Wrong Time.")
1. I believe the children are our future

**Author's Note: Welcome to the first chapter of "Nature Versus Nature!" I'm so excited about this story, you have no idea. Anyway, the key song and its section for this chapter is "Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston, "I believe the children are our future." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Love Like You by Rebecca Sugar, "I always thought I might be bad, now I'm sure that it's true, 'cause I think you're so good, and I'm nothing like you"; "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance, "We'll carry on, and though you're dead and gone believe me, your memory will carry on"; and "Teach Your Children Well" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, "Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry, so just look at them and sigh, and know they love you."**

* * *

Beneath the deserted desert city of Ouroboros, deeper than where even the bravest adventurer would dare to go, a cockroach scuttled through an old empty tunnel. A tunnel that was empty for the moment, that was.

Lights appeared around a nearby corner, drawing close to the bug. It ran away, instinctively fearful of both the light and the creatures carrying it.

The shadows shivered and drew back as a small parade came slowly around the corner, simple torches held by humanoid snakes. They slithered as slowly as they dared, reluctant to get to the goal set upon them.

But the snakes kept going. They had to, and they soon reached a large door set in stone. It opened creakily when the one in the lead knocked three times.

The Serpentine, for of course that's what they were, walked single-file into a large dark room. They spread out, hissing to each other in anticipation.

At the front of the room in a throne-like chair sat a man with four arms and blood-red eyes. That was the leader, Lord Garmadon, who was generally terrifying, completely out of plans, and occasionally chucked pebbles at people with bad ideas.

Garmadon sighed and leaned forward in his chair, rubbing his temples. "Does anyone have any ideas to defeat the ninja?"

"Oh! Oh!" One Constrictai foot soldier raised his hand eagerly. "How about a giant ham sand-"

"NO GIANT HAM SANDWICHES!" Garmadon yelled, and he threw a rock that hit the Constrictai on the head.

"How about a giant sssalami sssandwich?" A Hypnobrai scout suggested, licking his lips.

Garmadon didn't even deign to give that a reply (other than a pebble, which he threw extra hard). "Now. How about something that actually has a chance of working? Hm?"

"We could steal a Grundle skeleton and bring it to life to hunt the ninja," a Venomari soldier offered.

Garmadon groaned, using one of his upper arms to hold his head wearily. "We already did that. Didn't we just do that? Yes, we just did that just the other day. It did nothing. The Grundle didn't even come to life."

"That'sss not entirely true," a Fangpyre scout said slowly. "The Grundle came to life and wasss defeated, but only by accident, becaussse the ninja had sssome ssspecial tea or sssomething."

Lord Garmadon looked up, confused. "What?"

"It wasss in the newssspaper," the Fangpyre scout explained. He held up a newspaper. "Sssee? The Grundle attacked sssome random kidsss at a comic book shop."

"Let me see that!" Lord Garmadon demanded.

The Fangpyre scout with the newspaper scurried up to Lord Garmadon and handed it to him.

"Those aren't some random kids," Lord Garmadon realized, holding up the newspaper and pointing to the photo on the front cover. "Those are the ninja as children! But how?"

The Fangpyre scout shrugged. "I guessss turning back the clock on the Grundle turned back time on the ninja too sssince they were sssso clossse to the Grundle when it happened. But it sssaysss in the article that the ninja showed up too, ssso the weird tea that turned the Grundle back to bonesss mussst have turned the ninja into, well, ninja again."

"So the ninja were children for a short period of time," Lord Garmadon mused. "Perhaps we could use that to our advantage."

"But they're normal now, and even when they were kids they knew how to defeat usss," a Hypnobrai soldier argued. "And they ssstill beat the Grundle."

Garmadon stopped pacing. He whirled around and pointed at the Fangpyre. "Say that again."

"They ssstill beat the Grundle?" The Hypnobrai wondered.

"No, before that," Garmadon stated.

"But they're normal now?" The Hypnobrai asked.

"No, after that," Garmadon said impatiently.

"Even when they were kids, they knew how to defeat usss," the Hypnobrai repeated.

"Exactly. They recognized us as the enemy and acted accordingly," Lord Garmadon thought out loud.

"What are you saying?" Skales asked, slithering up behind him.

Lord Garmadon smiled. "I'm saying that if the ninja didn't remember who to fight and how to defeat them, or even better, if they could be convinced that my brother is the enemy, we'd be home free."


	2. A new soul in this very strange world

**AN: Welcome to the second chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Updates should continue to be Mondays and Fridays. The key song and its section for this chapter is "New Soul" by Yael Naim, "I'm a new soul in this very strange world." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "1945" by Jamie Grace, "Little kids didn't have a care, there was love growin' up everywhere"; "I'm Just A Kid (Clean)" by Simple Plan, "I know that it's not fair, I'm just a kid and I'm alone"; and "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry, "Gather up your tears, keep them in your pocket, save 'em for a time when you're really gonna need 'em."**

* * *

Cole yawned, eyes opening slowly and closing again. He was so tired. Maybe Daddy (no, Dad, Cole was a big boy, he didn't say stuff like "Daddy" anymore), maybe Dad would let him stay in bed if he pretended to be too asleep to get up.

He rolled over, frowning. Actually, he didn't really want to stay in bed. His bed was really hard, and his pajamas didn't feel right.

In fact, nothing felt right.

Cole sat bolt upright. He wasn't wearing his pajamas. Instead, he was wearing what looked like a sheet tied around his body in a kind of dress. Plus, he wasn't in his bed. He wasn't even in his bedroom.

He was in a weird room with gray walls, floor, and ceiling that, when he looked closer, were made of stone. There was a door set in one wall and Cole got to his feet slowly, holding his head with one hand.

He stumbled over to the door, his arms and legs seeming the wrong size for his body all of a sudden. He tripped once over his sheet-pajamas, sprawling right up next to the door. Cole picked himself up and tried the handle. It was locked.

"Tha's weird," he muttered, voice thick with tiredness. He pushed at the door feebly, still slightly sleepy, but it didn't give.

Sighing, Cole turned his back to the door and leaned against it, sliding down to the ground. All of a sudden, he realized he wasn't alone. There were three other boys in the room with him, all dressed in the same grayish sheet-pajamas and all still asleep.

Wait. Only two were asleep. The third one was sitting in a corner, staring at him with blank eyes.

Cole tripped over to the awake boy, slipping now and then on his too-big totally-not-a-dress. He sat down across from the much smaller boy, putting on his best smile. "Hi. I'm Cole. Who're you?"

The boy watched him silently.

Cole didn't let that stop him. "Do you know why we're here? Wherever here is, that is."

The boy just stared at him.

Fine. Two could play at that game. Cole stared right back at the other boy.

The kid was a whole lot smaller than him, with blond hair and very big eyes. He looked really confused.

"Are you scared?" Cole asked bluntly.

The smaller boy just kept looking at him blankly.

"It's okay. I'm not scared of anything, so I can protect you," Cole reassured clumsily. Some weird part of him felt like the little boy should respond to that with a funny misunderstanding, but Cole shrugged that thought off and scooted closer.

The boy pressed himself against the wall, now looking almost scared as well as confused.

Quickly remembering that they had just met, Cole scooted back again. "Sorry. I forgot I don't actually know you. I bet your parents prob'ly told you not to talk to strangers, huh?"

The littler boy shook his head. Then he paused and nodded, then he paused and shook his head again.

"You don't know?" Cole prodded.

The boy nodded. He didn't know.

Suddenly, there was a loud yawn from across the room. Cole whirled around into a standing position and stepped toward the noise, vaguely aware the blond boy behind him was pressed tightly against the wall again.

One of the other boys had woken up and was looking around with confused eyes. He had spiky brown hair and was lots taller than the blond boy, but still smaller than Cole himself, Cole noted smugly.

The boy stood and shakily walked over toward Cole. He stood only a foot away, blinking groggily. Cole waited for him to say something but the boy just stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels and scowling.

"Hi," Cole prompted. "My name's Cole. What's yours?"

"'M Kai," was the sullen answer. "Any idea why we're here or where here is?"

Cole shook his head helplessly. "I don't have a clue."

Frowning, Kai said unhappily, "I don't like this. I don't like it all. Hey, who's that?"

"Him?" Cole asked, pointing behind himself. "I dunno. He hasn't said anything. I don't think he can talk."

"He's sure old enough to talk. Lemme see," Kai said skeptically. He went around Cole and crouched in front of the little boy. "Hey. What's your name?"

The boy stared at him blankly.

"Yeah, I'm done," Kai declared after a few seconds, standing.

"That's it?" Cole asked, amused. "You're not very patient."

Kai shrugged. "Nope."

"So for our escape team, we've got you, me, an' a little kid who doesn't talk," Cole listed unhappily, not liking his chances.

Pointing, Kai said simply, "We got him too."

Cole turned and saw the final boy waking up with wide, scared eyes. He and Kai walked over without a second thought and helped the redhead to his feet. Cole noted that the boy was about right between Kai and the blond boy in height and age.

"Who're you?" The boy asked, his high voice sounding suspicious. "W-w-where are w-w-we?"

"I'm Cole, he's Kai, an' we don't know where we are," Cole explained. "I'm guessing you don't have any idea?"

The boy shook his head, his lower lip trembling. He scrubbed at his eyes with one hand.

"Come on," Kai complained. "He better not start crying or anything."

That only seemed to make the boy more upset. His face scrunched up and his eyes started watering.

"Hey, it's okay," Cole said quickly. He didn't want the kid to cry anymore than Kai did, he was just nicer about it. "What's your name?"

"I'm J-j-jay."

Kai raised an eyebrow and repeated mockingly, "J-j-jay?"

"No, j-j-just J-j-jay," he tried to clarify. "J-j-jay. J-j-j-j-j-j-"

"Kai, stop teasing the poor kid," Cole said sharply, then softened his tone as he turned to said 'poor kid'. "It's okay. He's just being stupid."

Kai stuck out his tongue at Cole.

Jay giggled, then furrowed his eyebrows. "Who's that?"

Cole didn't even need to turn around to know Jay was pointing at the blond boy. "We've got no idea."

"W-w-why don't you ask him?" Jay said.

"'Cause he doesn't talk," Kai answered promptly.

Jay frowned, but couldn't be concerned for long. It just wasn't in his nature. He bounced up and down, eager to get to know his new friends. "Do you w-wanna p-pl-p-play a game?"

"Like what?" Kai asked, immediately interested.

"Duck, duck, gray duck?" Jay suggested.

Cole shook his head, forgetting his worries at the idea of having fun. "We've only got three people, four if you count Short-Light-And-Silent back there. It wouldn't work. Tag?"

"We'd just run in circles," Kai dismissed. "There's nothing to duck behind. Same goes for Hide And Seek."

"And there doesn't seem to b-be any cars or b-b-blocks in here," Jay observed. He wrinkled up his nose. "There doesn't seem to b-be m-m-much of anything in here. It's b-boring."

"Hmmm," Cole contemplated.

Before they could come up with another idea for a game, there was a sound like a key in a keyhole. They jumped in shock and turned to the front of the room. The previously locked door was swinging wide open.


	3. Heaven's got a plan for you

**AN: Welcome to the third chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" I think you'll find this chapter verrrrry interesting. The key song and its section for this chapter is Don't You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia, "Heaven's got a plan for you." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "You'll Always Be My Baby" by Sara Evans, "Whatever road you may be on, know you're never too far gone"; "I Can Be Your Friend" by VeggieTales, "The inside is the part that we're supposed to care about"; and "He Didn't Have To Be" by Brad Paisley, "All of a sudden oh it seems so strange to me, how we went from something's missing to a family."**

* * *

In the doorway stood a strange, scary man. The man had rough-looking skin that made Cole think of tar and burnt things. His hair was a funny (not funny ha-ha, funny weird) grayish purple, and it stuck up and back from his face. He was smiling, but his teeth were pointy, so it didn't make him seem any nicer. He had four arms, not two, four. The worst part was his eyes, which were red like blood.

Kai pushed Jay behind himself, instinctively protective of the smaller child. The two backed away several steps, both to be closer to the blond boy and to be farther from the frightening man. Cole intentionally placed himself in front of all three littler boys, crossing his arms (just like Dad always did when he got mad) and glaring up at the newcomer.

"Good, you're awake," the stranger said in an oddly cheerful voice, entering the room. He closed the door behind him and Cole could hear the lock click. "How are you all doing?"

Slightly stunned by the kind words from the scary face, Kai blurted out, "Who're you?"

The man frowned, obviously confused. "What do you mean?"

"Who. Are. You?" Kai repeated.

"W-what's w-wrong with you?" Jay added.

"And why are we here?" Cole finished.

The man stared at them in concern. "Don't you know? Weren't you told about what would happen if these unfortunate events occurred?"

"What unfortunate events?" Cole asked suspiciously, a strange, squirmy knot forming in his stomach. "What should we know?"

"Oh no," the man said quietly. He didn't seem to have heard Cole. "Oh, you poor things."

"What?!" Kai demanded frantically. "What happened?!"

"You might want to sit down," the stranger replied. It seemed like he was intentionally avoiding the questions.

He knelt and the three standing boys slowly sat on the cold floor. They stared at him, each equal parts scared and curious.

"How to explain this," the man mused.

"How about at the b-buh-begin-b- the start?" Jay suggested innocently.

The stranger nodded heavily. "Yes, that would be good. Okay. A long time ago, there lived a man with the title 'the First Spinjitzu Master.'"

"Not that far at the start," Kai muttered.

Cole poked him and shook his head. It wouldn't be a good idea to annoy this mean-looking guy, especially since they'd just meet.

"He created this great nation of Ninjago using the four main elements of the universe," the man continued as if Kai had never spoke.

"W-what's a, uh, emelent?" Jay wondered, doing his best to repeat the word he didn't understand.

"Element, stupidhead," Kai corrected.

"I'm not a stupidhead," Jay said petulantly. "Mmmy p-parents say I'm smart. I j-just don't know wuh-what a element is."

"It's like, a part of something," Cole explained, proud to have the right answer.

"That's correct," the strange man put in.

The boys turned to him. They had almost forgotten he was there.

The man continued speaking. "The elements I speak of a part of something, but they're part of the entire world. The main elements are earth, fire, lightning, and ice. Each had a Golden Weapon to accompany it and help control it."

"Cool!" Jay proclaimed, quick to latch onto a subject other than his own debated intelligence.

"Very cool," the man agreed. "Too cool for their own good. The First Spinjitzu Master had two sons, Garmadon and Wu, and the younger one, Wu, wanted the four elements and their weapons all for himself."

"That's selfish," Kai thought out loud. "If the elements made up everything, they should just be left alone to do what they do. You could really mess stuff up if you tried to control them."

Smiling sadly, the man nodded. "Unfortunately, Wu didn't have your reasoning skills. He saw his father, older brother, and anyone who believed that the four elements should be used to keep the peace as cruel and wrong. In his mind, there was only one way to rectify that."

The boys sat in silence.

After a few moments of suspense, Cole was brave enough to venture a question. "What did he do?"

"He destroyed his father."

"Destroyed?" Jay echoed. "Does that m-m-mean-"

"Killed," the man finished grimly. "Yes."

Jay made a little squeak that would've been funny under any other conditions. As it was, the others shivered in simultaneous horror.

"Garmadon, along with some assorted others who had elemental powers, tried to stop Wu, and they were somewhat successful. Wu was banished. The elemental masters and the people of Ninjago were able to live in peace. But there was a price to be paid for keeping the peace," the man said.

"A price?" Kai repeated skeptically. "Like, they had to buy the peace at the store?"

"No, a more abstract price," the man explained. "While Garmadon banished his brother, Wu cursed him. Garmadon was left looking less like a man and more like a monster."

"So, like you," Kai muttered.

"B-but Kai!" Jay exclaimed, scandalized. "That's not nice!"

"No, Kai is correct," the man said wearily. "Exactly like me. In fact, he is me."

"You're the older brother, Garmadon," Cole realized, looking up at the man in amazement. "Oh, wow!"

"I don't know about that, Cole. He'd hafta be really old to be the guy in the story," Kai said doubtfully.

The man now known to the boys as Garmadon laughed lowly. "My age is not important. My story, however, is very important, for you see, when the elemental masters were able to live in peace, they didn't pay attention to the signs of the times. They got married, had children, and forgot how to fight. Years later, Wu returned. Swearing vengeance, he murdered the elemental masters."

"No!" Jay gasped.

"Stop making comments and let him finish, Jay!" Kai hissed.

"Yes, he murdered them, and he almost murdered their children. But with their last breaths, the elemental masters called for me, and I came to rescue the children," Garmadon finished. "That is why you are here with me now."

Cole was the first to put the pieces together. He screamed, "No! You're lying! My, my dad isn't an elemental master, and he definitely isn't dead!"

Quickly, Jay spoke up through rapidly forming tears. "M-m-my p-ppparents are alive too! They w-w-wouldn't j-just leave m-me!"

Kai flung himself at Garmadon, howling, "No! You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong! My mom and dad aren't dead!"

Garmadon scooted back quickly, out of Kai's reach. He looked like he was about to cry, or oddly enough, laugh. "I'm sorry, children. But you have to trust me: that's what happened."

"W-why? Wh-y? Why?" Jay wailed.

"Why what?" Garmadon asked.

"Why'd you save us and you couldn't save our parents?" Cole sniffled, curling in on himself.

Kai nodded in shaky agreement. "Yeah!"

The little blond boy by Kai didn't react; he just looked worriedly between the other three boys.

"Your parents died and you lived because..." Garmadon paused, apparently having a hard time getting the words out. "You four are destined to stop Wu."

Slowly, the weeping came to an end.

Four pairs of eyes peered up at Garmadon with various levels of confusion, anger, and sadness (and, in the case of the blond boy, a strange blankness).

"W-We're s'posed to do w-what?!" Jay demanded shrilly.

"Stop Wu," Kai repeated. "We'll, uh, revenge our parents. We'll be like spies, or superheroes."

"A lot like superheroes," Garmadon agreed amiably. "And I think the word you're looking for is 'avenge'. You will avenge your parents by stopping Wu."


	4. There'll be peace when you are done

**AN: Welcome to the fourth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Thanks for all of your reviews, with special thanks to Nagasha for term "kidja" and bayboo20 for the interesting analysis, and also thanks for 500 views (wow!)! The key song and its section for this chapter is "Carry On My Wayward Son" by Kansas, "There'll be peace when you are done."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "I'll Try" by Jonatha Brooke, "I am not a child now, I can take care of myself, musn't let them down now"; "Somewhere Out There" by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram, "Someone's saying a prayer that we'll find one another"; and "Kings & Queens" by Audio Adrenaline, "Break our hearts once again, help us to remember when we were only children hoping for a friend."**

* * *

Wu stopped in his tracks. No longer pacing, he spun to face his saddened and confused nephew and demanded, "What do you mean you lost them?"

"He didn't lose them, it was more like they lost him," Nya corrected. "Lloyd, how about you tell him the story you told me?"

Lloyd sighed but nodded. "It began like any other mission. The police tipped us off that my dad- I mean, that Lord Garmadon and the Serpentine had been spotted..."

* * *

"In the showroom of an art gallery? An art gallery?" Jay repeated, apparently still not over the location the villains had chosen, even though he was already heading into it. "What, did Lord Garmadon decide he wants to give up evil and turn to appraising artwork?"

"Hey, it definitely isn't the weirdest mission we've ever been on," Cole figured, shrugging. He made it to the door first and turned, making a shushing motion.

"Please, name one weirder mission," Jay said flatly, blatantly ignoring Cole and staying put.

"Last time, when we got turned into kids," Zane volunteered quietly, following Cole.

Kai laughed. "And when Zane ripped his chest open, then glowed it up and floated."

"When Zane did what?" Lloyd repeated, half shocked, half completely unperturbed given the rest of the weirdness of his life.

"When I realized my origin and gained my true potential," Zane explained, poking his head back out through the doorway.

"When he turned out to be a robot," Kai translated.

"Oh, got it," Lloyd responded. He turned back to Jay, tripping slightly over his own feet in his haste and forgetting about his new larger body. "Don't forget when you guys got trapped in Darkley's basement and I had to befriend Gene to help you fight off your, uh, doddelbangers."

"Doppelgängers," Zane corrected.

"Okay, okay, we've been on several weird missions," Jay gave in irritably.

"Guys!" Cole hissed, coming back through the doorway. "We've got to get going. Besides, our weirdest mission was obviously getting jobs, even if that was only weird because it was weirdly normal for us."

"True," Kai confirmed, and he and Lloyd obeyed.

Jay took a moment to sigh deeply then followed.

The five ninja boys snuck through the halls of the art gallery. It was spookily empty.

"Where do we go?" Kai asked, looking around.

Suddenly, a small group of people ran through the hall right past them, shrieking, "Snakes! Lord Garmadon! Snakes! Help!"

"I think we should go that way," Jay suggested cheerily, pointing in the direction the people had come from.

Kai pushed Jay's pointing hand down, replacing it with his own, and said quickly, "Uh, I think we should go that way."

"Yeah, you're right, Kai," Cole said after briefly consulting a map of the gallery on a nearby wall.

"'Yeah, you're right, Kai'," Jay mimicked. "I said it first!"

"Well, I thought it first," Kai retorted.

"How am I, the child of the group, more mature than you guys?" Lloyd asked rhetorically, pausing in his steps and falling a little behind the group.

Without missing a beat, Zane put in, "Perhaps it is because you have been artificially aged into the teenage years and they have not aged despite being in their teenage years."

"Burned by the ninja of ice," Cole teased, turning from the map and joining the discussion. "Life is cruel, isn't it?"

"Hey, weren't you just saying we should get going?" Jay hinted, taking a few steps forward.

"And also that I was right," Kai added, doing the same.

The five of them continued down the hall, passing door after door. Lloyd fell further behind, concentrating on not falling over his long legs.

Then Serpentine swarmed from the doors lining the hall, separating Lloyd from the other four. The snakes looked at the green ninja, then they promptly ignored him in favor of rushing toward his friends.

Cole, Jay, Kai, and Zane formed a rough square facing outwards, ready for battle.

The shadow of a figure with four arms loomed on the wall at the end of the corridor where the ninja had just come from.

"Go get him, Lloyd!" Jay shouted.

"We've got this!" Kai added, taking a fighting stance.

* * *

"...I ran after the shadow, and it ran away from me. I'm still getting used to my bigger legs, so I tripped a few times as I ran. Anyway, I couldn't catch my da- Lord Garmadon. I didn't even see him. And when I came back to where I left Cole, Jay, Kai, and Zane, they were gone. I searched and searched, but I couldn't find them, so I came back here. That's all I know, Sensei," Lloyd admitted, spreading his hands wide. He then spread his hands even wider, momentarily distracted by his new large arm span.

Wu stroked his beard pensively. "This is not good, not good at all."

"I know! I mean, how could they just disappear like that?" Lloyd exclaimed.

"They didn't disappear, Lloyd," Nya said slowly. "They wouldn't do that."

"No, someone did something to them to make them not come back, and I think we all know exactly who that someone is," Sensei Wu stated.

Lloyd's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I know."

"Then we better get looking for them right away," Nya remarked. She shook her head worriedly. "Oh, I hate this. Who knows what Lord Garmadon is doing to them!"


	5. The dreams you never thought you'd lose

**AN: Welcome to the fifth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Thanks to my beta readers: my sister (imagine forevermore), my mom, and my brother (who is making a GRAPHIC NOVEL OUT OF THIS! I'M SO PUMPED!). The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Name" by Goo Goo Dolls, "All the dreams you never thought you'd lose got lost along the way." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Good Life" by Audio Adrenaline, "I've lost everything I could ever want and ever dream of. This is the good life: I found everything I could ever need here in your arms"; "Who I Am" by Jessica Andrews, "I'm young but I am able"; and "So Small" by Carrie Underwood, "It's okay to open up, go ahead and let the light shine through. I know it's hard on a rainy day, you want to shut the world out and just be left alone, but don't run out on your faith."**

* * *

"You're giving us new clothes?" The dark-haired largest of the little boys questioned, looking up at him with confusion evident in his large eyes.

Lord Garmadon nodded. "We may have to go out and about at some point, and Wu likely has records of what you were wearing when I saved you. My assistants already got you changed out of the clothes that Wu would identify you in, and I sent them to pick up new clothes for each of you so that you wouldn't have to wear those sheets all the time."

"Good, 'cause I'm really not comfy in this thing," the boy who used to be the red ninja (Karl? Yes, Karl, Lord Garmadon was pretty sure that was what his name was) said loudly, plucking at the sheet wrapped around him.

"Be nice, Kai," the dark-haired boy (Casey? Christopher? No, it had an 'o' sound in it, so… Conner? Colton? That was it, Cole!) chided. "Mr. Garmadon's being so nice to us, he can't help it if he didn't have the right clothes on hand for us."

"Please, just call me Garmadon," Lord Garmadon said generously.

"Bbbut you said something about ass'stants. Who are your ass'stants?" The small former blue ninja (Jacob, maybe? Or Gabriel?) asked, putting one little hand to his chin thoughtfully.

"You mean ass-IS-tants, Jay," Kai corrected.

"Assistants, then," Jay repeated stubbornly. "Are they cool? Do they w-w-wwwant to help us too?"

"They're rather cool and helpful, yes," Lord Garmadon allowed. "They're getting your new things right now."

"You said things that time, not clothes," Kai pointed out. He bounced a little in place. "Ooo, ooo, are we gettin' stuff other than clothes?"

"Yes, you are. You'll be staying with me for quite some time, so you'll need beds and toys and all sorts of things little boys need for this, your new room," Lord Garmadon stated, waving his hand around the room they were in. "My assistants should be here with them any moment. In fact, they should've been here by now, so I'm going to go check on them. Feel free to explore your room while you wait."

Lord Garmadon turned and reached for the door.

"Wait!" Cole blurted out.

Confused and not a little miffed, Lord Garmadon turned back and raised an eyebrow, something that he knew made him look rather intimidating.

Cole shrunk a bit at Lord Garmadon's expression, but he regained his courage and straightened his shoulders. "Before you go, could you tell us his name? He's not saying anything, and I wanna know who he is."

Lord Garmadon frowned. Cole was pointing at the smallest child in the room, a blond boy who looked very confused and rather concerned by what was going on around him. Lord Garmadon didn't have a clue as to the boy's name.

"Bluff," he thought to himself, when the little blond didn't speak up and help. Lord Garmadon racked his brain for a hint but didn't receive one, telling himself, "Bluff, and gain their confidence. Make something up, the kid isn't talking, and if he's not talking when faced with a scary figure telling him scary things then he may never talk, so just bluff and give him a name, any name."

"I don't know his name," Lord Garmadon's mouth said without consulting his brain. "His parents didn't tell me, so I don't know his name."

"Oh, excellent bluff," he thought.

Cole's brow furrowed, and Jay looked thoughtful. Kai tilted his head to one side skeptically, and the blond boy keep looking a combination of confused and concerned.

"But, that brings me to the topic of names, and that's something we need to go over," Lord Garmadon felt himself saying. "We need to change your names as well, so if anyone hears me discussing you they won't report you to Wu. Wu will have probably put out a missing persons report, see, so we'll need new names."

Great. That hadn't been a part of the plan at all. But it was too late to go back.

"New names? Like codenames? Like spies?" Kai said eagerly. He shot his hand up into the air, waving it around. "Can I pick my codename first?"

"Sure," Lord Garmadon said, trying to sound like that was the plan.

Kai scrunched his face up in thought. "I wanna be… Captain Biggie Fire!"

Jay shrieked with laughter.

Cole giggled. "Captain what-what? That's not a codename, that's a mess."

"Shut up!" Kai said fiercely. "I'm gonna be Captain Biggie Fire from now on, and there's nothing you can do about it."

"Yeah, b-but Garmadon mmmight do something about it," Jay pointed out, looking trustingly up at Lord Garmadon.

"That is a very interesting name, but not really a good codename," Lord Garmadon said, biting his lips in a desperate and only partially successful attempt to hide his laughter.

"Oh yeah? Then what's a good codename?" Kai challenged.

Lord Garmadon cleared his throat, buying a moment of time. What to name them based on, what to name them based on… What did he know about them? Ah, their ninja colors. But he didn't want them to remember their life as ninjas, so he should mix up the colors. Furthermore, colors weren't good names. He'd name them based on each other's colors, but great (read: evil and terrible) things that were those colors. "These names I'm about to give you are good codenames. Kai, you will be Storm. Jay, you'll become Blood. Cole, you can be Ghost. And, uh, blond boy, you're Midnight now."

Kai scrunched up his face again, but in disgust and not thought this time. "I don't wanna be Storm. That's stupid."

"And B-b-blood sounds mmmean. I don't like it," Jay said fretfully.

"Midnight is much cooler than Ghost. I don't want to be Ghost," Cole complained, kicking at the ground.

"What about you? Do you have an issue with the names?" Lord Garmadon asked, leveling a look at the silent blond boy.

The boy's eyes widened, and he shook his head energetically.

"See? Midnight likes his new name," Lord Garmadon pointed out.

"I wanna be Blood," Kai declared. "Let me switch with Jay. Make him be Storm."

"I'd bbbe okay w-with that," Jay ventured hopefully. "I really don't wuh-wanna buh-be Bbblood."

"Ooo, may I take Midnight then?" Cole asked, jumping up and down. "Cole, stage name Midnight. That'd be awesome!"

Lord Garmadon sighed. It wasn't that likely that the boys would connect color-based names with the colors of their old ninja suits, after all. "Fine, Kai is Blood, Jay is Storm, Cole is Midnight, and little guy, you're Ghost. Does that suit everyone?"

The four boys, including Ghost, nodded in unison.

"All right. I'll go check on my assistants then," Lord Garmadon said, but before he could move more than turning to the door again, there was the sound of a knock.

"Lord Garmadon? It'sss Ssskales and sssome other Ssserpentine. I brought thossse clothesss you wanted," a voice said. "And the othersss have the ressst of the thingsss you sssaid that you wanted."

"Excellent. They're right on time," Lord Garmadon approved, then called through the door, "One moment, Skales!"

The snake on the other side of the door sighed loudly, but waited as requested.

"He talks funny," Kai observed. "Ssss. It's weird. He talks weird."

"There's nothing w-w-wrong wwwith that," Jay said more fiercely than Lord Garmadon had heard him speak yet.

"Exactly," Cole approved.

Lord Garmadon could practically hear Kai's shrug. "Yeah, yeah, whatever."

Turning to the little boys, Lord Garmadon made himself as nonthreatening as possible. "Now, my assistants talk a little funny. They also look a little funny."

"Hey!" Skales protested from the other side of the door.

The three speaking boys giggled.

"I look funny too, don't I? But I'm helping you, so it's okay. These guys are going to help you too, so it's okay that they're weird. There's nothing wrong with being different," Lord Garmadon said, grimacing a little at the fact that he sounded like a children's after-school television special.

"Nothing wwwrong," Jay said again, sounding satisfied.

"Skales, you and the others can come in now," Lord Garmadon directed.

The door opened and a quintet of Serpentine entered, one from each of the four main tribes plus Skales.

Jay and Kai (that is, Storm and Blood) shrieked and grabbed for each other. Cole (Midnight, he's Midnight now) moved reflexively in front of the three smaller boys. Ghost just blinked, looking even more confused and concerned.

"Oh, pleassse," Skales said dismissively at the boys' fear. He looked at Lord Garmadon and hefted a basket up meaningful in his arms. "I got all the Ssserpentine who usssed to be parentsss to donate their kidsss' old clothesss."

"Snakes wear clothes?" Kai questioned, peeking out from behind Jay.

"Our little onesss do to protect their ssskin while their ssscales grow in," Skales explained semi-cordially. He shifted the basket in his arms, then gave up and put it down. "I put Chokun on ssspare outfitsss, Sssnappa and Rattla on the bunk bedsss, and Lizaru on toysss."

"Very good. Boys, this is Skales. Skales, these are Midnight, Blood, Storm, and Ghost. Would you introduce yourself to the boys, Skales?" Lord Garmadon invited.

Skales smirked. "I believe you jussst did that. I mussst go now, for I have important work to do. Goodbye, boysss."

With that, the Hypnobrai general exited, leaving four confused little boys, four awkward Serpentine, and one Lord Garmadon fuming at the lack of respect shown to him.

"Uh, where do you want thessse?" The Fangpyre asked, straining under the weight of two sets of miniature bunk beds stacked on their sides in his and the Hypnobrai's arms.

"Just set them down," Lord Garmadon said dismissively.

The snakes happily did so.

Lord Garmadon looked at his (no, "the", not "his") boys. "This is your room. You can set it up as you like, just direct the Serpentine where you want everything, and don't forget to get changed."

He made to exit the room, grabbing the door handle.

"W-w-where are you going?" Jay asked quickly, running up to him.

"Yeah, shouldn't you stay and make sure we don't mess anything up too much?" Kai asked, joining Jay at the man's side.

"Are you planning on messing things up, Blood, Storm?" Lord Garmadon asked, arching an eyebrow.

"No!" Kai said, far too quickly to be convincing.

"Yeah, no," Jay said, then giggled. "I mean, no, yeah. Yes, nope? Nope, yes?"

"I am entrusting you to the Serpentine for the moment, and also I am trusting you not to mess things up 'too much'. I will see you in a few moments, okay?" Lord Garmadon said. He nodded to the boys, of whom the taller three were chorusing "okay"s at him, and turned on his heel, exiting the room and closing the door behind himself.

He waited outside the door, listening, just long enough to hear Cole begin directing the Serpentine with Kai and occasionally Jay interrupting him. Then he headed down the hall, ready to get back to directing the majority of the Serpentine in their latest plot. As he walked, however, his mind drifted back the room he had just left, and, more specifically, to who he had left behind.

Garmadon thought Cole, Kai, Jay, and Ghost had taken his claims rather well. This plan would work out after all.

More secretly, he thought the boys were very cute. They were maybe three to eight years old and dragged up thoughts of Lloyd.

He shook himself firmly and redirected his thoughts from fondness. Not that he would ever admit how fondly he remembered his son. Of course not. He was an evil, evil, evil being, too evil for a family. This wasn't him trying to make a family from the new family of the ones he had lost.

Not at all.


	6. I just want you to know who I am

**AN: Welcome to the sixth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" This chapter contains what I like to refer to as Schrödinger's shoes; it's like Schrödinger's cat (the famous thought experiment or paradox in which a cat is both dead and alive until you look at it), but instead of the cat being both dead and alive, the shoes on Lego minifigures are both there** **(such as Karloff referring to tying his shoe)** **and not there (we can't normally see if they have them, except for the Mailman's sandals sometimes), so in this case the shoes (and socks) are there. Anyway, the key song and its selection for this chapter is "Iris" by Goo Goo Dolls, "When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert, "I know they say you can't go home again"; "Thanks For The Memories" by Fall Out Boy, "And I want these words to make things right, but it's the wrongs that make the words come to life"; and "Rotten to the Core" by Disney's Descendants, "The past is past, forgive, forget. The truth is, you ain't seen nothing yet."**

* * *

A long time passed as Lord Garmadon directed the Serpentine. They had a plot to distract the "good guys" from the disappearance of the four of their comrades via robbing random stores for tools with seemingly no connection. Little would Wu and his two remaining students realize the tools they would steal would have exactly zero purpose other than getting Wu to try and figure out their purposes. It would distract and frustrate Wu, allowing Lord Garmadon to focus his attention on his bigger, more important plot: the four children.

Speaking of the children…

Lord Garmadon was slightly ashamed to admit that he had almost forgotten about them. He didn't completely forget, of course; what kind of evil mastermind forgot about an ongoing plot? He had, however, shifted them to the back of his mind. It wasn't until Snappa approached him after the meeting that they were brought to the forefront of his brain.

"Lord Garmadon, sssir?" The Fangpyre in front asked, raising one hand tentatively as if he was in school.

Lord Garmadon smiled at the honorific "sir". It was good to be appreciated for the leader he was. His smile was only on the inside, of course; he couldn't have his underlings seeing him as happy and soft. "What is it?

"The children, sssir. We finished sssetting up their room long ago, and we've been watching them for quite a while. Is there going to be some kind of shift sssyssstem for who babysssits the little ninja, sssir?" Snappa questioned.

Lord Garmadon scowled reflexively. "First of all, don't call them 'the little ninja' or anything like that. We don't want anything sparking their memories. Secondly, of course there will be a system."

He turned to the room at large, where the majority of the Serpentine were just sitting and standing around chit-chatting. "Attention! I have a very important mission that I need volunteers for. Anyone up for it?"

Hands shot up around the room eagerly. A very important mission was practically bait for a power-hungry Serpentine.

"Good. You two, the Venomari in the back," Lord Garmadon directed.

Spitta and Lasha fist-bumped.

"And you, the Constrictai in jumping up and down and waving at me in the middle," Lord Garmadon added.

Bytar wriggled excitedly.

"Aaand let's go with you, the Hypnobrai in the front," Lord Garmadon put forward.

Mezmo hissed with glee.

"And my Fangpyre friend Snappa here, too, of course," Lord Garmadon said merrily.

Snappa winced.

"The five of you, see me in the hallway. Dismissed," Lord Garmadon ordered.

The majority of the Serpentine in the room began slithering out dejectedly, disappointed at not having been chosen for the important mission. A few stayed to talk, and a few more gathered in one corner and began doing what Lord Garmadon could only assume was a sort of training or practice, although it very well may have been a friendly fight-to-the-death-or-at-least-to-the-maiming. (The Serpentine were… Interesting, like that.)

The five chosen Serpentine followed Lord Garmadon into the hall with varying degrees of excitement.

"What are we doing? Ssseizing control of the police force? Creating hordesss of animal minionsss to follow usss to victory? Oh, I know! We're kidnapping the ninja!" Bytar cheered.

"We've already kidnapped the ninja, you idiot," Mezmo pointed out calmly. "And it'sss not like it would take any effort to ssseize control of the police force, they're ssso incompetent their country reliesss mainly on a sssmall team of young and inexperienced multi-colored ninja to protect it. Ssseizing control of the police force probably wouldn't be worth our time."

"You just want to sssuck the fun out of everything," Bytar pouted. "And what about my animal horde plan?"

"That animal plan might be onto sssomething," Mezmo allowed.

"I can sssee usss now, with flocks of assssorted mammalsss, birdsss, reptilesss, amphibiansss, and insssectsss following our every move," Bytar sighed dreamily.

"No, we're not doing that. That'sss ssstupid. You know what? We should unleash the Great Devourer," Spitta suggested eagerly.

"Devourer. Devourer. Devourer," Lasha began chanting, and Spitta joined in. "Devourer. Devourer. Devourer!"

Mezmo hit them both over the head. "We did that already, too!"

"Serpentine, please. Let's focus," Lord Garmadon growled.

"Besides, our missssion isn't anything fun like that," Snappa grumbled. He sighed a long sigh. "Remember the kid ninja?"

"You mean, remember our young guessstsss?" Mezmo corrected. "We shouldn't call them 'ninja' or anything like that becaussse then they might remember their old lives."

Lord Garmadon pointed at Mezmo vindictively. "Thank you!"

Snappa rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Remember our 'young guessstsss'? Our very important missssion is babysssitting duty."

There was a short pause. Then jaws dropped.

"That'sss not important!" Bytar protested.

"On the contrary, it's very important," Lord Garmadon stated firmly. "We need strong, smart, skilled Serpentine to watch our young guests, one snake per day and another per night. They must be cared for and supervised 24/7, so that we can shape them into the evil, or as they'll see themselves, 'good', minions we want them to be. It's an incredibly important task, one I'm only entrusting to you because I think you're up to the task. Are you ready for a challenge?"

"I'm up to the tasssk!" Bytar said immediately, eager to show his worth.

"We're in," Spitta said quickly, pointing between himself and Lasha, who nodded.

"I'm ready for a challenge," Mezmo agreed.

Snappa sighed. "I'm in too, I guessss. Let'sss do thisss."

"Very good. Snappa, will you show them to the room our young guests are staying in?" Lord Garmadon asked-slash-ordered.

"I could, but you should come too. They were asssking for you. Kai, I mean Blood, essspecially was insssissstent about asssking you sssomething, and little J- Ssstorm kept repeating that you had sssaid you'd sssee them in 'a few minutes' and it had been more than a few. I told him you probably misssspoke and meant a few hoursss rather than a few minutesss, but it's ssstill been a while sssince they sssaw you and they may need sssome encouragement," Snappa pointed out.

Now it was Lord Garmadon's turn to sigh. "Fine. I'll come, but only for a few."

"Isss 'a few' a few minutesss or a few hoursss?" Bytar questioned.

"A few minutesss, probably," Mezmo mused.

Lord Garmadon threw all four of his hands up in exasperation. "A few is a few, okay!"

Wisely, Snappa didn't question him. The Fangpyre turned and waved a hand over his shoulder at them, calling back as he walked away, "They're thisss way, our 'young guessstsss.'"

Lord Garmadon and the other Serpentine followed him.

When they reached the door, Snappa knocked, then called through the door, "Are they dressssed now?"

He waited, adding as an aside to Lord Garmadon, "It took sssome finagling to figure out sssizesss and preferred ssstylesss."

"They're dressssed," an exhausted-sounding voice called out through the door.

Snappa opened the door and swept his hand in front of him. "After you, sssir."

"How kind," Lord Garmadon said dryly. He stepped into the room and looked around.

The Serpentine and young former ninja had done a good job of decorating, he had to admit. There were posters of trucks, animals, tools, and even a few dancers on the walls. The two bunk bed sets were set up along one wall adjacent to the door, and four dressers were set up along the opposite wall also adjacent to the door. Toys were scattered across the floor already, and a comfy couch sat in one corner with a small bookshelf next to it. In the center of the room, on a plush rug, the four little boys were playing a card game, while leaning against the wall opposite the door were the three remaining Serpentine who had been assigned to watch the boys.

One of the Serpentine, Lizaru, who was probably the one who had called through the door, went to the door immediately. In a low voice, he hissed, "Where have you been, Garmadon?"

"Lord Garmadon," Lord Garmadon corrected cooly.

"Garmadon, Lord Garmadon, whatever. It'sss been hoursss. We've had to coax and comfort and dressss and doodle and play-fight and play board gamesss with these little ankle-bitersss. We can't do thisss forever. What'sss the plan?" Lizaru grumbled.

"Garmadon?" Jay repeated, head shooting up. He stared at the door, his face breaking into a grin. "Guys, Garmadon's b-back!"

"The plan is babysitting. You three have done enough, go take a rest," Lord Garmadon ordered.

"Sssound good to me. Rattla, Chokun, we're leaving!" Lizaru called back. The three Serpentine practically ran out of the room.

"Good riddance," Kai called after them cheerfully.

"Hi, Garmadon!" Jay said happily. "Oh, oh, look at my new clothes!"

The little boy stood, arms spread and feet wide, to show Lord Garmadon his outfit. He spun, pointing at each article of clothing excitedly. He wore a blue t-shirt with a wrench and a bolt decorating it, scuffed dark blue jeans, pale blue socks, and velcro-strapped shoes with little lightning bolts on the sides.

Skales apparently had quite a sense of humor.

"You look very nice, Storm," Lord Garmadon approved.

Jay grinned and did a little bow. Turning to one side, he poked Kai in the head repeatedly. "Bbblood, show him your clothes! Show him, show him, show him!"

"Fine, if it gets you to leave me alone," Kai grumbled, but he was grinning as he too stood. "Um, I got sweatpants, gray sweatpants. And gray socks. I also have a red shirt with long sleeves on it, and it's got a pattern of boats on it. I don't like it."

"I would've thought you would enjoy red," Snappa commented innocently, shooting Lord Garmadon a sideways glance.

"Yeah, but it's got boats on it," Kai said, as if that explained everything.

"Do you want to tell Lord Garmadon why you don't like the boatsss?" Snappa asked.

Kai wrinkled up his nose, catching Snappa's mistake immediately. "'Lord'?"

"That's just what my assistants call me," Lord Garmadon said quickly, coming a little closer to the boys.

"Okay," Kai said, accepting it. "I don't like boats, 'cause they make me think about big water, and I don't like big things of water. But this was the best-fitting shirt, so I have to wear it. I tried to make Storm wear it, but then Rattla picked me up and Lizaru forced me to wear it."

"B-blood's also got pppretty shoes. Look at his shoes!" Jay ordered Lord Garmadon.

Lord Garmadon looked at Kai's shoes. "They're very- bright."

"They light up," Kai boasted. He stomped his feet a few times, then stuck out one red-shoe-clad foot toward Lord Garmadon.

Lord Garmadon came even closer. He knelt to one knee, holding Kai's foot in one hand and examining his shoe. "They do indeed light up."

"Cole's, uh, Midnight's turn. Midnight, your turn! Show him!" Jay encouraged.

Cole stood and did a little twirl. "Black shirt that says 'I rock' on it, I think like rock and roll. Gray sweatpants like Kai's. Uh, white socks, and black dress shoes with those funky little buttons on the sides."

"You look nice," Lord Garmadon told him.

Cole shrugged, but he was smiling.

"Ghost, Ghost, you gotta jjjoin us," Jay instructed the smallest boy.

Ghost looked at him thoughtfully.

"C'mon," Kai added his voice to Jay's. "Stand up and show off your cool new clothes!"

Cole didn't say anything, but he offered a hand to Ghost.

The little boy dropped his cards, took Cole's hand, and stood, a little shakily, far too shakily for a boy his size and probable age. He looked at Lord Garmadon, pointed at his own body, looked at Lord Garmadon, and sat down again, picking his cards back up.

"That's a lovely shirt. What's that on it, a blue snowflake?" Lord Garmadon asked, secretly vowing to make Skales suffer if the Serpentine's taste in clothes made the boys remember their pasts.

Ghost shrugged, brushing a hand over his chest thoughtfully. He didn't say anything.

"And he's got wwwhite sweatpants, like Blood's and Midnight's, but w-white, and white socks, and white tennis shoes. Midnight had to do his laces. I don't know why he's got so m-much white, he's gonna get messy quick. I know I'd get messy real quick if I was all in white," Jay mused.

"He'll be fine," Kai dismissed. "I got a little sister your age, or maybe his age, I don't know how old you guys are, and she's super neat. Ghost looks like a neat kind of guy too."

"You've got a sister?" Jay asked. He made a face. "Glad she's not here. Don't you know girls have cooties?"

"Not this girl. Nya's awesome. I play basketball with her, and I watch TV with her, and I help her separate her food into piles when we eat, 'cause it's more better to eat when your food isn't touching," Kai told Jay earnestly.

"Speaking of eating, when are we gonna eat? I'm hungry, and so are they," Cole said, gesturing at his friends.

"Really? Did they say so?" Lord Garmadon asked, stalling for time.

"Yeah. At least, Kai and Jay did. I mean, Storm and Blood. Blood and Storm did. And Ghost nodded," Cole informed Lord Garmadon. "So, mealtime?"

"No, let's not talk about eating now. We gotta talk about Nya," Kai insisted.

"What about Nya?" Lord Garmadon asked, eager to change the topic, but regretting it as soon as he realized the topic he had locked onto.

"You said our parents are, uh, not around anymore. But what about my sister? Is she here?" Kai asked. He craned his head to one side, as if his sister might be hiding behind Lord Garmadon or the Serpentine still standing the doorway.

"I don't know where your sister is," Lord Garmadon said honestly. "I don't think she perished along with your parents, but it's possible."

Kai's face crumpled up.

Quickly, Lord Garmadon added, "But it's also possible that she was picked up by a nice family, or that the police are holding her, or that Wu took her. I'm afraid we don't know."

It was the truth, in a way.

"That's better than nothing," Cole said encouragingly.

Kai nodded slowly. "Yeah. I guess so. Thanks, Garmadon. We can talk about eating now."

"Or can w-w-we talk about the snakes in the door?" Jay suggested.

"Both," Lord Garmadon decreed. "Boys, these are your new babysitters. Introduce yourselves, babysitters."

"I'm Sssnappa, asss you already know," Snappa stated.

"Mezmo," Mezmo said cooly, pointing at himself.

"I'm Ssspitta and this knucklehead isss Lasha," Spitta offered, slinging an arm around Lasha's shoulders.

"And I'm Bytar!" Bytar said cheerily.

The four boys looked at Lord Garmadon for a long moment.

"What?" Lord Garmadon demanded, perhaps a little harshly, as Jay and Ghost both flinched.

"We were kind of hoping you'd be watching us," Cole said slowly.

"After all, you saved us, and you're taking care of us," Kai said just as slowly.

"I thought you wwwere adopting us," Jay said bluntly, than exclaimed as the other three boys looked at him, "W-what?! I did!"

"And I did tell you not to be stupid," Kai countered.

"I'm not stupid! You're stupid!" Jay said quickly.

"You thought he was gonna adopt us, even though you stutter and Ghost doesn't talk and Midnight's a control freak who thinks he's automatically the leader and I'm a troublemaker," Kai stated.

"Hey!" Cole protested automatically.

"Yeah, so? I wwwant him to," Jay said petulantly. "Our ppparents are gone. B-but Garmadon's here. He could bbbe our new dad."

Lord Garmadon swallowed roughly. There was a lump in his throat for some reason. Probably he was getting sick from spending so much time in the damp, dusty, terribly unsanitary Serpentine tunnels. Yes, that had to be it. "Boys, if you want to, er, think of me as your new father, you may."

Kai's jaw dropped.

Cole made a choking sound.

Jay gasped delightedly. He jumped at Lord Garmadon, latching onto and hugging the man's lower left arm. "Really?!"

"Really," Lord Garmadon confirmed around the totally-sickness-induced lump in his throat. "That doesn't mean I'm going to be here all the time. I have to run missions to stop Wu, and I have to be in charge of my assistants, and I have to have time to myself as well, but between all that, I'll be here for you."

"Can I hug you too?" Cole asked suddenly, sniffling. He was crying a bit.

"You can," Lord Garmadon allowed.

Cole threw his arms around Lord Garmadon's torso, stating quietly, "Thanks."

"C'mon guys, you're gonna make me cry," Kai complained.

"Get in here, Blood," Cole told him simply.

"Yeah, sure, whatever. But first," Kai said, voice trailing off. He turned to Ghost and gestured at the little boy, motioning toward himself and toward the hugging trio.

Ghost didn't move.

Kai shook his head, sighed, stepped to the littlest boy's side, and picked up him under the arms. Turning around, Kai deposited Ghost on Lord Garmadon's knee and wriggled into the hug between Cole and Lord Garmadon's knee.

They stayed there for a moment.

Then, simultaneously, Jay pulled away, and Ghost slid neatly off of Lord Garmadon's knee. Both returned to their cards. Kai broke away a second later, nonchalantly sitting back down. Cole stayed for a bit longer, then pulled back, rubbing at his nose with his sleeve.

"Now we can talk about eating," Cole said, sounding satisfied.

Jay giggled. "Yeah. I'm hungry. It's wwway past lunchtime. I think. There aren't actually any clocks here, so I don't actually know."

"Snappa, would you get me some of my food? Enough for four hungry little boys?" Lord Garmadon requested.

Snappa scoffed. "Your food? Lord Garmadon, you eat sssludge with grubsss in it."

"A side effect of the curse that Wu put on me. My digestive system has a hard time processing anything other than condensed, er, 'good', and certain bugs," Lord Garmadon said quickly to the boys, who didn't look any less grossed out at the explanation.

"Regardlessss of why you eat it, it'sss not sssomething for little boysss to eat," Snappa pointed out.

Lord Garmadon paused and thought about that for a moment.

"Yeah, no thanks, Dad," Kai scoffed. "Grubs and sludge are icky, I'll bet on it."

Something inside Lord Garmadon shivered. He told himself it was anger at his food being dismissed are gross. That was definitely the reason.

"I'll get sssome real food. How doesss macaroni and cheessse with apple ssslicesss sssound, boysss?" Snappa asked.

Jay clapped his hands together, and Cole and Kai fist-bumped.

"That ssseemsss to be agreeable to them. Isss it agreeable to you, Lord Garmadon, sssir?" Snappa asked.

"I'll allow it," Lord Garmadon stated agreeably.

Snappa nodded at him, then turned to the snakes by his side. "Ssspitta, Bytar, come with me to prepare the meal. Mezmo, Lasha, you two ssstay and get inssstructionsss from Lord Garmadon and the boysss on how to babysssit."

"First of all, if you're gonna babysit us, you gotta do whatever we say," Kai said immediately.

Lasha nodded agreeably, but Mezmo looked very skeptical.

"That's wrong, don't listen to him," Lord Garmadon said quickly over the sound of the three other Serpentine leaving the room and closing the door. Lord Garmadon regretted momentarily ever having deaged the ninja in the first place.

"You're supposed to be firm but kind," Cole instructed.

Mezmo nodded agreeably, but Lasha looked very skeptical.

"That's correct, you can listen to him," Lord Garmadon stated. Maybe he should just let Cole be in charge. Then Lord Garmadon imagined the tantrum Kai and possibly Jay would throw if he left Cole in charge, not to mention the Serpentine's confusion and feelings of betrayal. (Lord Garmadon wondered inwardly how he had gotten to know these boys so well so quickly.)

"We should get a clock in here so you can enforce mealtime and bedtime and snacktime and naptime," Cole suggested.

"I'm not taking a nap!" Kai protested, latching onto the perceived insult instantly.

"Sure you won't. Once they turn the lights out, it'll be lights out for you too," Cole said confidently, then he looked at Lord Garmadon. "Little kids never think they have to take naps, that's what my old Dad used to say. I don't have to take a nap anymore, but sometimes I do anyway. Is that okay, Dad?"

"That's okay," Lord Garmadon stated.

"And you've got to ppplay with us," Jay said eagerly.

"What kind of gamesss do you like to play?" Mezmo inquired.

Jay looked at Kai. Kai looked at Cole. Cole looked at Jay. The three of them grinned.


	7. This is my fight song

**AN: Welcome to the seventh chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Your reviews are greatly appreciated and squealed over with glee. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Fight Song" by Rachel Platten, "This is my fight song."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways and The Guardians of the Galaxy, "Your dead-end dreams don't make you smile"; "Without Complaining / Philippians 2:14" by Steve Green, "Do everything without complaining"; and "Youth" by Glass Animals, "You were clearly meant for more than a life lost in the war."**

* * *

When Snappa returned with Spitta, Bytar, and the food in tow, he opened the door to find Mezmo and Lasha running in circles around the room at top speed, Kai and Jay on their respective backs. Cole was just behind them, a bit slower, but still pretty fast, Ghost on his back. Lord Garmadon was lounging on the couch by the bookshelf, watching them with amusement in his eyes and a book on babysitting in his hands.

"Any TV shows or movies should be approved by the parent first," Lord Garmadon listed off, reading from the book in his hands.

"Any TV showsss or moviesss should be approved by the parent firssst," Lasha repeated merrily.

"Any TV showsss or moviesss should be approved by the parent firssst," Mezmo repeated dutifully, stopping for a moment to readjust Kai on his back.

"No hitting or kicking is allowed, from kids or from babysitters," Lord Garmadon read.

"No hitting or kicking isss allowed, from kidsss or from babysssittersss," Lasha repeated happily.

"No hitting or kicking isss allowed, from kidsss or from babysssittersss," Mezmo repeated, then added, "Really? None? None at all?"

"None, none at all," Cole confirmed, twirling in place and trying (and failing) to get Ghost to giggle.

"When in doubt, get me," Lord Garmadon finished.

"When in doubt, get me!" Lasha yelled.

"When in doubt, get Lord Garmadon!" Mezmo yelled back.

"Are you quite done?" Snappa asked, obviously amused at the scene in front of him. "We have the food if you are, but if you want to keep goofing around, we can take it away and bring it back when you're done."

"Wwwe're done, wwwe're done!" Jay said eagerly. He tugged on Lasha's bandolier, requesting, "Lemme down, ppplease!"

"Gladly," Lasha stated, and he brought his hands in front of him, letting go of Jay.

Jay squeaked and tightened his grasp around Lasha's shoulders. "No! You've got to kneel or sit or something! Don't just drop m-m-me!"

Lasha sat obediently.

Letting go immediately, Jay ran to Lord Garmadon, who had just stood from his couch and was stretching. "Did you see what he did?"

"No, I was putting away my book. Are you okay?" Lord Garmadon asked.

"Yeah, I'm okay," Jay admitted.

"No harm done, then," Lord Garmadon said, and he clapped his hands. "Let's sit in the middle of the room, boys."

"We get to eat on the floor?" Kai asked eagerly, dropping from his place on Mezmo's back like a little, well, ninja.

"We do indeed," Lord Garmadon confirmed.

Kai fist-pumped the air.

Cole strode to the center of the room, getting there first, and knelt. "You can get down now, Ghost."

"You failed, Cole. Ghost didn't say anything," Kai teased, joining him in the middle of the room and sitting cross-legged.

Cole shrugged. "I guess he just isn't ready yet."

"Or mmmaybe he can't talk," Jay suggested, sitting beside them. He looked at Ghost. "Is that it, Ghost? Can you not talk?"

Ghost looked at him for a moment, opened his mouth, closed his mouth, and shrugged.

"Guess that's a 'mmmaybe,'" Jay mused.

Kai spotted the plates first, snatching one out of Bytar's hands. "Macaroni and cheese, please. And apples too."

"Patience," Cole told him.

"I was patient. I said please," Kai pointed out.

"No, that's pppoliteness," Jay corrected.

"Same difference, tomato potato," Kai dismissed breezily.

Lord Garmadon joined the boys in the center of the room, brushing aside some cards on the floor before he sat. "I'll serve up the macaroni and cheese if you'll give me that pot, Spitta."

Spitta gladly relinquished said pot and placed the other item he held, the apple slices on a plate, in front of Ghost.

Ghost took a slice of apple in one small hand and stared at it thoughtfully.

"It's an apple, Ghost. You eat it," Jay said helpfully, and he took a slice of apple and demonstrated, sticking it into his mouth and chewing with exaggerated motions before swallowing loudly and pointedly.

"I'm sure Ghost already knows that, Storm," Kai scoffed, taking the forks from Bytar and tossing one beside each person.

"I'm not so sure he does," Jay stated slowly.

Ghost slowly opened his mouth and placed the apple into it. His eyebrows went way up. He chewed enthusiastically, swallowed, and grabbed another slice.

"I think he likes them," Jay laughed, and he dumped nearly half the plate of apple slices onto Ghost's plate.

"Aw, Storm," Cole said disapprovingly.

"W-w-what? The apple m-made Ghost m-make a facial expression. I'm pppretty sure that deserves a lot of apples, Midnight," Jay said contentedly. "J-just look at Ghost's face."

Cole looked.

Ghost was grinning as he chewed on an apple slice.

Cole sighed. "Fine. But I still want some apples."

"Me too," Kai stated.

"The ones Ghost has are mmmine and Garmadon's, then. Right, Dad?" Jay said, turning to Lord Garmadon.

Lord Garmadon found himself unable to say when faced with a young face and that word. "Right, Storm."

Jay thrust his arms in the air in victory.

"I'm just gonna leave thessse drinksss here. My missssion leavesss in half an hour, ssso I have to get going," Spitta explained. He gestured to Lasha and the two headed for the door.

"Have Lasha explain the babysitting rules to you on the way!" Lord Garmadon called as the door swung shut. He turned to Mezmo and Bytar in turn. "Mezmo, while we eat, explain the babysitting rules to Bytar."

"Mission?" Kai repeated thoughtfully, caught on what Spitta had said. "Like a spy mission?"

"Kind of. We go on missssionsss for the betterment of the world, trying to ssstop Wu and hisss friendsss," Snappa explained.

Lord Garmadon gave him a discreet nod of approval.

"Can we go on missions too, Dad?" Kai asked, turning to Lord Garmadon eagerly.

Again, Lord Garmadon found himself unable to say when faced with a young face and that word. He was so weak. "You sure can, Blood."

Kai shrieked with glee.

Jay giggled excitedly.

Coel fist-pumped the air.

Ghost grinned, but Lord Garmadon was pretty sure that was from having just tried some of the macaroni and cheese Lord Garmadon had just given him.

"But, first you must train for a long time to be able to go on missions," Lord Garmadon added hastily.

"Wwwhen can we start training?" Jay asked eagerly.

"As soon as you finish eating," Lord Garmadon said graciously, then he immediately regretted it as the boys started wolfing their food down as fast as possible.

"Boysss, boysss, if you keep eating that ssspeed you will choke. Ssslow down," Snappa instructed.

Begrudgingly, the boys slowed down, although they were now eating at about twice the speed they had initially been eating at. Forks clinked against plates, drinks were slurped down (and choked on once in Jay's case), and soon enough the boys had completed their meal and were looking at Lord Garmadon eagerly.

"So what are we starting with?" Kai asked, hopping up from his place and prancing around the room. "The Extra-Advanced Grinding Elbow? The Trip of a Hundred Falls? Oh, oh, I know! The Slaughterer's Sacrifice Swing!"

"Where does this child come up with these things?" Lord Garmadon thought to himself, shaking his head, then said, "How about we start with elementary sparring?"

"Elementary sparring! Sounds good, sounds good!" Kai cheered.

"Blood, you face off with Midnight. Storm, you face off with Ghost," Lord Garmadon ordered.

The four boys looked confused.

Lord Garmadon sighed and began pointing around the room. "Midnight, you stand there. Blood, stand next to him, facing him. Storm, Ghost, do the same thing over there."

"We'll just clean up the thingsss and go, then?" Snappa suggested.

"It only takes one snake to clean up. Snappa, you may go. Bytar, Mezmo, you two stay. I want you to put on a demonstration for the boys," Lord Garmadon instructed.

Snappa hissed with disapproval, but did as he was told, packing up the lunch things and taking them away. As he went out the door, he called back, "Ssso long, boysss!"

"Bye, Snappa!" Cole, Kai, and Jay called after him, with a little stuttering on the "b" on Jay's part.

"All right, boys. Watch Bytar and Mezmo. Snakes, come stand over here," Lord Garmadon instructed.

Bytar went to the suggested spot eagerly, while Mezmo did so more begrudgingly.

"Bytar, attack Mezmo, but be sporting about, no dirty tricks at least to start with. Mezmo, defend yourself, but demonstrate only positive techniques," Lord Garmadon stated, wanting to keep the boys believing in the facade that they were the "good guys" and also desiring that the boys wouldn't imitate poor sportsmanship in their play-fighting and then harm themselves. (It was out of interest in protecting his assets, okay. Any evil mastermind would do the same. It had nothing to do with him growing fond of the boys and not wanting them to get hurt, because he wasn't fond of them. He wasn't.) "When you are ready, begin."

Mezmo and Bytar circled each other warily. Bytar flexed his arms, steadfastly avoiding Mezmo's gaze. Mezmo widened his eyes and hissed in anticipation.

The boys gasped in anticipation.

Bytar struck first, swiping a kick at Mezmo's left leg.

Mezmo stepped back then swung forward with a right hook.

Bytar dodged. He feigned another kick, but actually he went forward with a right hook of his own followed by a right-handed upper cut aimed at Mezmo's chin.

Mezmo almost fell for the feign. Quickly, he recovered his senses and ducked, leaning back slightly. Bytar's right hook went just over his head and the upper cut missed entirely.

Sensing Bytar was off-balance, Mezmo went for a punch to the stomach.

Narrowly, Bytar twisted away, using the motion to send him right toward Mezmo's side, which he then tried to strike with an open palm. Bytar's hand connected with a solid thwump.

The boys began moving closer, intrigued and excited by the proceedings in front of them.

Mezmo bent in two at the blow, then jack-knifed back. Warily, he circled around Bytar, searching for an opening like Bytar had found on him.

Bytar grinned savagely and made a 'come on' motion with his left hand, holding his right hand up ready to strike again.

Expertly, Mezmo faked a punch at Bytar's head, but switched at the last moment to grab Bytar's shoulder and shove him away.

The boys were within touching distance now, Kai and Jay behind Mezmo and Cole and Ghost behind Bytar.

Bytar danced back, off-balance again. He swung his arms back, trying to regain his balance before Mezmo could get him. Bytar flailed slightly, not paying attention to his surroundings other than his attacker.

Bytar's left fist went right into the side of Cole's face.

The room went silent.

The two fighters froze.

The oldest boy crashed to the ground.

"Midnight?" Lord Garmadon whispered fearfully.

The other three boys rushed to Cole's side, with Lord Garmadon not far behind.

"Oh, great job, Bytar. Hit the kid, why don't you," Mezmo remarked sarcastically.

"I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to!" Bytar said helplessly, backing away.

"No hitting! No hitting, it wwwas in the rules, no hitting!" Jay scolded, looking up from examining Cole with worry in his eyes.

"Midnight, you gotta wake up, Midnight," Kai repeated over and over.

Cole groaned. His eyes fluttered, and then they opened. Sitting up, he mumbled lowly, "What was that? What happened?"

"Stupid Bytar was stupid and hit you," Kai said petulantly, glaring over his shoulder at the guilty Constrictai.

"And then you wwwent down and you wwwouldn't get up for like ten seconds," Jay said tearfully.

Ghost didn't say anything, but he flung his arms around Cole.

Lord Garmadon took a deep breath, then he let it out and took another one, then he let that one out too. "I'm very glad you're okay, Midnight."

Cole grinned up at Lord Garmadon. "Awww. Me too, Dad."

"Me too," Kai said fervently.

"M-me too," Jay echoed.

Ghost nodded enthusiastically.

Lord Garmadon turned to the Constrictai now cringing in the corner and eyed him thoughtfully. "Bytar? You're fired."

"It was one missstake, and I didn't even do it on purpossse," Bytar protested feebly.

"But you still made that mistake, and now I can't let you near my- the kids. Go get, oh, Snike. Tell him the rules for babysitting, emphasize the one you messed up, and send him to the other Serpentine in the rotation so that he can be a part of the schedule-making process. Actually, Mezmo, you go with him and work on that schedule. I'll be in charge of training my- the boys. You can come back when you're done," Lord Garmadon stated.

Mezmo gave him a mock salute and escorted the still-protesting Bytar out.

Lord Garmadon sighed and turned back to his- the boys. "Okay. Let's take things a little slower."

"A lot slower," Cole requested, standing up and dusting himself off.

"I want you to, one by one, come up to me and give me your best grip. Try to grab me in a way that would let you take me down," Lord Garmadon instructed.

"Are you going to bbbe okay, Dad?" Jay asked concernedly.

"I'll be fine, Storm," Lord Garmadon reassured.

Jay didn't look convinced.

"Do you really thought I could've fought Wu for so long and not be more than proficient in fighting? Trust me, none of you will be able to hurt me," Lord Garmadon reassured, then added to himself, 'none of you will able to hurt me the way that you are now'.

Jay looked slightly more convinced.

"Now, Midnight, attack me when you're ready," Lord Garmadon instructed, getting into a defensive blocking stance.

Cole looked Lord Garmadon up and down, then rushed at him, grabbing him around the waist and pushing off the ground, trying to tackle the man. He succeeded only lightly rocking Lord Garmadon back and forth.

"That's harder than I thought it would be," Cole admitted, letting go.

"Good try. Next time, don't kick off the ground until the last moment and use your bodily momentum to push me down," Lord Garmadon instructed. "Blood, you may go next."

"Yeah, well, I don't really wanna-" Kai began, but halfway through his sentence he ran to Lord Garmadon and went for his knees, only to end up clinging to the man's legs without success.

"Interesting use of trying to catch me off guard; however, you'll need to do better. If you want to go for the legs, go from behind," Lord Garmadon advised, prying the boy off of him and setting Kai back on his feet. "Storm, you're up."

Jay bit his lower lip worriedly, then he meekly approached Lord Garmadon. Suddenly, he jumped at the man, ending up cradled in his "father"'s arms.

"Was that what you were trying to do?" Lord Garmadon asked, half amused and half resigned.

"I dunno," Jay admitted, and he began squirming until Lord Garmadon set him down.

"Okay, Ghost. Come and grab me, then we can move on to some basic punches once you take your turn," Lord Garmadon coached.

Ghost looked unsure, but he walked up to Lord Garmadon. After a moment, he reached out and grabbed Lord Garmadon's hand in both of his own hands tentatively, then looked up at the man hopefully.

Lord Garmadon looked at the ceiling, trying to gather the strength to say what he needed to say. "Ghost. Ghost, no. Ghost, that is not what I meant."

Ghost looked very sad.

"Aw, look at that face," Cole said, motioning at Ghost.

"Good luck resisting, Dad," Kai joked.

Jay just cooed and gave Lord Garmadon some very big and wobbly pleading eyes.

Lord Garmadon sighed and gave in. "It doesn't mean you can't hold my hand, it just means we're training right now and I need you to train with the others. You may hold my hand later, but for now, let me go."

Ghost gave Lord Garmadon's hand a gentle squeeze. Then he let go, looking incredibly satisfied with himself.

"Okay. Let's run that drill again- Ghost, so help me, you can't hold anyone's hand during training. Not Midnight's, not Blood's, not Storm's. Just train, okay?" Lord Garmadon said exasperatedly.

Ghost dropped the hands he was holding, having somehow fit both Kai and Jay's hands in one of his hands and Cole's in the other. Ghost looked up at Lord Garmadon, the little boy looking the very picture of innocence, and fastened his own two hands together in front of him.

Jay began to giggle at the scene, then Kai joined in, then Cole wasn't far behind. Soon Ghost was grinning up at Lord Garmadon, shoulders shaking with silent laughter, as the other three boys laughed loudly enough for four.

Lord Garmadon couldn't help it. He smiled at his- THE boys. "Fine. So long as you can use those two hands holding each other to punch, okay?"

Ghost nodded happily.


	8. Nothing in this world I wouldn't do

**AN: Welcome to chapter eight of "Nature Versus Nurture!" And welcome to the longest chapter yet: it's over 4,000 words! The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Hey Brother" by Avicii, "If the sky comes falling down for you, there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Christmas Dreams" by Francesca Battistelli, "With all of the secrets that this season keeps"; "Don't Forget To Remember Me" by Carrie Underwood, "I feel so small sometimes in this big ol' place, I know there're more important things, but don't forget to remember me"; and "Lead Me" by Sanctus Real, "They're just children from the outside."**

* * *

"Can we have a break from training? Getting ready for missions is fun and all, but after a bit it gets boring," Kai said, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

"Yeah! I wwwanna go outside," Jay stated. He bounced on his toes and looked up at Lord Garmadon pleadingly.

"That could be amenable," Lord Garmadon allowed. "You have been working so hard these past days, and doing so well, after all."

Jay giggled at the compliment.

Kai tried to scowl, but he was grinning.

Cole shot one hand up in the air.

"Yes, Midnight?" Lord Garmadon asked patiently.

"Where outside would we even go?" Cole asked, and then rephrased, "I mean, where are we? Are we close to a playground, oh, or an amusement park?"

"I'm afraid we're nowhere near any of those. We're in the middle of the desert," Lord Garmadon explained.

Kai groaned. "What?! Then it won't be any fun going outside. The weather'll be all sandy, and the sun will be all sunny. I like the sun, but the desert's too much of it."

"I actually like the desert. I live in the desert! I mean, I used to," Jay corrected himself quickly, looking downcast.

Ghost patted him on the back sympathetically.

Kai and Cole looked like they were going to cry.

Lord Garmadon grasped for words, trying to find a suitable topic for making the boys happy again. Finally, he found one. "What if I told you I could make the desert like any other place? That I could change the weather, and make it exactly like each of you want?"

Jay looked up. "Wwwhat?"

"I have a special weapon called the Megaweapon that allows me to create things. I'm sure that would extend to weather," Lord Garmadon explained, thinking through the logistics quickly. "Yes, I'm sure it would. You know what? I'm going to go get the Megaweapon right now. Boys, you go with Mezmo. Mezmo?"

The Serpentine on babysitting duty looked up from the magazine he had been perusing through, feigning interest in the conversation.

"I want you to take the boys to the main entryway. On your way, pick up spare clothes from the stash Skales set up. Make sure you get a variety of sizes and suitabilities for different seasons. I'll meet you in the main entryway in a few minutes," Lord Garmadon instructed.

Mezmo shrugged. "Sssure thing."

Lord Garmadon turned back to the boys. "I'll see you in a few moments, okay?"

"Okay, Dad," Cole said. (Jay was still too busy wiping away his tears and Kai and Ghost were still too busy trying to comfort him to respond.)

Lord Garmadon nodded to them, then he turned on his heel and walked out the door. Strolling down the twisting halls of the caverns, he thought about the best way to phrase his order for the Megaweapon.

"I wish to create a different kind of weather" maybe? No, too vague, he couldn't guarantee how the weather would change.

"I wish to create a change in the weather from what it is right now to the weather I have picked out in my head" perhaps? No, too specific, he wouldn't be able to change the weather in multiple ways.

"I wish to create the ability to change the seasons" possibly? No, simultaneously too specific and too vague.

He got to his room as he was still thinking, and he picked up the Megaweapon almost absentmindedly, his mind on his wording and not on his weapon. Lord Garmadon made his way to the main entryway, still thinking as he was greeted by his- THE boys.

"Ooo, that looks cool, Dad!" Jay said excitedly when he caught a glimpse of the Megaweapon, apparently over his grief.

"Very cool," Cole approved.

"Eh, it's okay," Kai said begrudgingly.

The other three boys looked at him.

"Yeah, okay, it's awesome," Kai admitted, grinning as he was caught out in his lie.

"Regardless of its look, it is very useful," Lord Garmadon stated. He brandished it toward the outside. "Stand back, boys."

Each of the boys took a step or two back.

"I wish to create in myself the ability to change today's environment to my liking!" Lord Garmadon bellowed, and he thrust the Megaweapon out.

Magic swirled in the air, and Kai and Jay "ooh"ed in unison. Cole gasped. Ghost's eyes went wide.

After a moment, the magic disappeared, and Lord Garmadon leaned against the wall of the entryway, exhausted from his wish.

"Did it work?" Kai wondered after a moment.

"Only one way to find out, Blood," Lord Garmadon said, setting the Megaweapon down gently. He pointed at the outside, which consisted of sand for as far as the eye could see with only the occasional chunk of rock or statue sticking out of it for variety. "I want it to get moderately cool, with this area transforming into something similar to autumn."

The air shifted in temperature, cooling off quickly.

"Oh, that's nice," Cole approved, walking out of the entryway. After a moment, Kai, Jay, and Ghost followed after him tentatively, the first two shivering slightly and the latter looking incredibly confused. The four boys walked around, looking at their surroundings with interest. Though nothing had changed except the air temperature, the boys hadn't been outside the whole time they had been with Lord Garmadon, so they were intrigued.

Yet, as they walked, the world around them changed.

Deciduous trees, leaves brown and orange and yellow red with fall's implications, popped out of the ground. Rakes appeared, propped up against trees. Pumpkins and pumpkin-carving tools came out of thin air. Blankets piled up in one spot, and jackets piled up in another. A table grew from the sand, a pitcher of cider and an assortment of glasses growing from the table in turn.

"Wwwhat jjjust happened?" Jay asked, shrinking back from a large pumpkin that had popped up right in front of him and grabbing for Ghost, who was staring at the trees with something akin to fright in his eyes at the newness.

"Dad said he wanted this place to transform into autumn," Cole realized quickly. "I guess the Megaweapon decided that meant all the little stuff that comes with fall too."

"Awesome!" Kai declared fervently, and he took a running leap at the blanket pile, quickly rolling himself up in several. He peered out at the others and declared, "I'm not a fan of the cool, but this I can get behind."

"You should each put on one of these jackets," Lord Garmadon figured, venturing out of the entryway and wandering to the jacket pile before picking up a few and giving each a critical gaze. "Storm, this yellow one should fit you."

"Okay!" Jay accepted, and he shrugged on the jacket.

"Midnight, this should work for you," Lord Garmadon stated, holding out a gray and brown flannel, which Cole took from him. "Blood, come on out."

"Not 'til you get me a nice thick jacket," Kai declared, still huddled into the blankets.

Lord Garmadon sighed but held up a thick orange coat more suited for winter rather than fall.

"Fine," Kai accepted, and he leaped out of the blankets, ran to his adoptive father, and snatched the coat out of the man's hand, wrapping it around himself.

"Ghost, take this one," Lord Garmadon instructed. He gave the littlest boy a light blue jacket covered with little gray cars, or at least, he tried.

Ghost wrinkled his nose and turned away.

"What, you don't want a jacket?" Lord Garmadon asked.

Ghost nodded.

"You'll catch a cold," Lord Garmadon warned, faintly remembering something his own father had said about going out in the cold.

Ghost shrugged and spread his arms, twirling slightly, appearing to revel in the cool air.

Lord Garmadon sighed. "Okay then."

"Given thossse jacketsss, I sssuppossse you won't be needing thessse, then?" Mezmo inquired, hefting up the box of clothes he had gotten.

"Yes, you can take those back to the stash," Lord Garmadon instructed. Then, in a lower tone, he addressed Mezmo further. "Imagine how much the ability to control my surroundings will help in the fight against Wu."

"Today'sss sssurroundingsss," Mezmo corrected. "You sssaid you wished for the ability to control today'sss sssurroundingsss. It'll probably only lassst for today."

Lord Garmadon blinked as he thought that one over. "I guess so. Oh well. It probably wouldn't impact Wu all that much."

* * *

"It's so cold," Nya complained, hugging herself.

Lloyd sneezed thoughtfully. "I don't feel up to stopping the Serpentine from stealing random antiques that are just gonna end up found nearby a few days later. Can we just go back to the Bounty, Uncle?"

Wu sighed but nodded. "If we all catch pneumonia, we won't be able to stop the Serpentine at all. We shall go back to the Bounty."

"This unexpected cool is really impacting us," Nya muttered under her breath.

* * *

"It won't be a big loss," Lord Garmadon assured the Serpentine.

Mezmo shrugged. "If you sssay ssso."

With that, the Hypnobrai turned and headed back inside.

Lord Garmadon stared after him for a moment, then repeated to himself, "It won't be a big loss."

With that, he went to Kai and Jay, who were having trouble raking the falling leaves into a pile. Many merry minutes passed as they got a nice pile set up and the little boys took turns jumping into it and scattering all of Lord Garmadon's hard work.

"All right, all right, that's enough," Lord Garmadon said after Kai and Cole teamed up to pick up the two smaller boys and gleefully toss them into the leaves one after the other, scattering the pile for good. He sipped some cider thoughtfully. "Would anyone be up for a snow day?"

"Yes!" Jay cheered emphatically, hopping up and down and spilling his own cider all over the ground. "I never get to see snow!"

Kai wrinkled his nose. "Will there be snow stuff? Clothes, I mean?"

"I'll make sure of it," Lord Garmadon promised. He waved his hands at his surroundings. "I wish for everything to be as it would be in a perfect winter, complete with 'snow stuff.'"

For a moment, nothing happened, and Lord Garmadon furrowed his brow with concern.

Then, snow began to fall.

Ghost gasped softly.

The other four, man and boys, whirled to look at him.

Eyes wide, Ghost pointed up at the sky, then the snowflakes falling all around him.

"It's snow, goofball," Kai told him, picking up some mittens and a hat that had just appeared on the ground next to him and putting them on quickly. "You're acting like it's some freaky thing you've never seen before or know about, but it's just snow."

"M-m-maybe it is some freaky thing he hasn't seen b-b-before," Jay pointed out, sitting down on a sled that had popped up out of the ground to put on some snowpants that had also popped up. "You don't know his life. I get the feeling there's a lot of things Ghost doesn't know about. He is j-just little."

"Not that little," Kai shot back, but he subsided.

* * *

"First the sudden cold, then the snow?" Lloyd marvelled, huddling into his blanket on the couch.

"I'm starting to think the weather has it out for us," Nya groaned. She rubbed her hands together and blew on them.

"Perhaps not the weather. Perhaps Lord Garmadon has some sort of weather-based plan going on," Sensei Wu mused.

They thought about that for a moment, then-

"Nahhh," the three of them said unison.

* * *

"Anyone wanna make a snowman?" Cole suggested, putting on his own gloves and a pair of earmuffs. "'Cause I sure do."

"Have Dad help you with that," Kai dismissed, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

"What's that face for?" Lord Garmadon asked suspiciously.

"Nothin'. I'm just gonna be throwing snowballs at those icicles hanging off the trees. I wanna get one down and eat it," Kai declared innocently, still grinning.

"I'll help wwwith the snowman," Jay volunteered, standing up. "B-but I wwwanna m-make some snow angels first."

Without further ado, he threw himself backwards into the snow and began flailing about. He hopped up and looked at the resulting imprint, which Lord Garmadon thought looked like an angel only as much as Kai looked like Cole. Jay seemed satisfied though, and immediately flopped down next to it and wriggled around to start another one.

"Ghost, do you wanna build a snowman?" Cole offered.

Ghost looked confused.

"It'll be fun, you'll see," Cole reassured, taking the little boy's hand and leading him to a pile of snow that had started accumulating. "See, first we make three snowballs. You know what snowballs are, right?"

Ghost shrugged.

"They're just balls of snow. Anyway, we make three of them, then we make them bigger and bigger, then we stack 'em on top of each other with the biggest on bottom and the littlest on top," Cole explained. "Then we put a face on the top one and arms on the middle one, and then it's snow in the shape of a man. A super cool snowman!"

Ghost did not look convinced.

"Here, I'll help," Lord Garmadon volunteered, walking forward. He crouched between the two boys and demonstrated rolling a few small sample snowballs, one in each hand.

Ghost copied him, creating three snowballs about the size of his fist, then stacked them on top of each other and looked up for approval.

"I suppose that's a snowman," Lord Garmadon allowed, fighting back a smile.

"It's a snowbaby," Cole declared, and he patted the newly named snowbaby on the head. "It's cool, but I wanna make a snowman."

He began rolling a larger snowball, and after a moment Lord Garmadon and Ghost followed his lead, each making a snowball about half as tall as Ghost.

"That's a good size for the head, Ghost, but Dad's and mine should be bigger," Cole thought out loud, continuing rolling his snowball until it was almost as tall as he was. "There. That's the base. Dad, yours is a good size for the middle, but you gotta put it on carefully."

Lord Garmadon picked up his snowball slowly, using all four arms to support it.

"Don't drop it!" Jay shrieked, having completed his flock of snow angels and came over to watch the proceedings.

"He won't drop it," Cole said confidently.

Cautiously, ever so cautiously, Lord Garmadon set the middle ball on top of the base.

"Now the head," Cole breathed, clasping his hands together.

Lord Garmadon took the head from Ghost's waiting arms, hefting it up and placing it on top of the other two snowballs to much applause from Cole and Jay. He stepped back, surveying his work confidently, then-

BLAM!

Something hit him in the back of the head, something wet, something that crumbled on impact. He turned and saw Kai with one hand outstretched, bits of snow falling from it.

"So you want a snow fight, huh, Blood?" Lord Garmadon growled playfully.

Kai gulped and put his hand down. "Y'know, now? I'm not so sure I do."

"Then a snow fight you will have," Lord Garmadon declared, and he bolted for Kai.

Kai screamed, half with joy and half with fear, and ran for it.

Lord Garmadon caught up with him quickly and picked him up him around the torso, hefting him into the air. He began walking toward the big snow pile that, just moments before, he had been using to make snowballs.

"Lemme go, lemme go!" Kai shrieked, wriggling as if his life depended on it.

"Let you go? All right," Lord Garmadon said calmly, and he dropped Kai into the snow pile.

Kai plunged into the snow pile, shrieking bloody murder.

"Bbblood!" Jay cried out.

"He's fine, don't worry, Storm," Lord Garmadon said dismissively.

"'M not fine, I'm freezing!" Kai protested from the depths of the snow pile, struggling to free himself using his short limbs. "Can we go to the next season already?"

"I'd bbbe okay wwwith that," Jay admitted.

"Wait!" Cole called out. He stuck a rake into either side of the snowman's torso and poked eight holes into the face, two for eyes, one for a nose, and five in a curve for the mouth. "Okay, now we can go on."

"I wish for the season to turn to spring with all that entails," Lord Garmadon said grandly.

The air was the first thing to change, going mild and breezy.

"This is more like it," Kai declared, stripping off his mittens and hat.

"This is pppretty mmmuch the same w-weather that autumn wwwas," Jay pointed out, shedding his snowpants.

Kai shrugged. "Yeah, but this feels better 'cause it comes right after winter."

"But what is there to do in spring?" Cole pondered, tossing his gloves and earmuffs away.

As if it had been waiting for him to speak, the sky went cloudy and rain began pouring down.

"Oh, yay!" Jay exclaimed, and he promptly began splashing in the resulting puddles.

Cole and Ghost looked at each other, shrugged, then joined in.

"Ick," Kai complained, and he sat in the soggy sand. "Oh!"

"What is it?" Lord Garmadon asked, rushing to the boy's side.

Kai plucked something from the ground and held it up to Lord Garmadon. "For you."

It was a small red flower.

"That's very sweet. Thank you so much, Blood," Lord Garmadon said warmly. He took it from the little boy gently and tucked it behind one ear. He cupped one of his upper hands by his face. "How do I look?"

Kai laughed out loud. "Silly!"

"Then my goals have been accomplished," Lord Garmadon said with a straight face.

"If your goal was to look silly, you accomplished that when Wu cursed you," Kai pointed out, swiping a hand across his face to clear it from rain.

"Really? Silly, not scary?" Lord Garmadon wondered.

"Uh huh. 'Cause I know you won't hurt us," Kai said earnestly.

Lord Garmadon swallowed hard. "Is that so?"

"Uh huh," Kai said again contently, and he leaned against the man.

Lord Garmadon wrapped two arms around the boy and used another one to wipe his face, ostensibly to get rid of the rain that was falling on him, but really to get rid of the tears that had sprung a leak.

* * *

"What is going on?" Sensei Wu marvelled lowly.

"Cold, snow, rain, what's next, heat?" Nya pondered.

"Sleet?" Lloyd suggested.

"Hail?" Nya shot back.

"Fog cover," Lloyd said nonchalantly, then he broke his composure by giggling.

"Dust storm," Nya said promptly, grinning.

Wu sighed.

* * *

"Can we go to the next season now?" Cole asked, walking up to Lord Garmadon and Kai where they were sat on the ground.

"We j-just got to this one," Jay complained, skipping around happily.

"But we're already soaking wet, and that's not good for us," Cole pointed out. "We need summer so we can dry up."

"We could get even w-wetter," Jay suggested. "W-we could do a p-pool p-party. I've always wanted to do a pppool ppparty."

"We'll need summer for that too," Cole said wisely.

"Summer it is," Jay agreed.

Ghost clapped his hands excitedly.

Lord Garmadon nodded to them and said, "I wish for it to be like summer, including a pool for a pool party."

Jay giggled with anticipation.

The sky went clear and hazy, and the air became very warm, almost sweltering. A pool grew into the ground, and a pile of swimsuits appeared beside it, a changing shack materializing as well.

"All right, boys, let's swim," Lord Garmadon declared.

Jay and Cole cheered. Ghost looked puzzled yet interested. Kai just scowled and said, "I'm not going out of the shallow end."

Lord Garmadon picked up an assortment of swimsuits and ushered the boys into the shack, which was conveniently separated into five changing stations. "Okay, each take a swimsuit that looks like it'll fit you, and get changed. Then we can do this thing."

Jay nabbed a dark blue pair of swim trunks immediately, while Cole went for a dark gray full-body wetsuit. Kai reluctantly grabbed swim trunks detailed with flames along the edges, and Ghost received a light gray version of Cole's wetsuit. Lord Garmadon took a pair of plain purple swim trunks for his own. They changed quickly, gathering outside the changing shack once they were done.

"Swim time!" Jay cheered, and he ran away from the changing shack and cannonballed into the pool. He surfaced, calling back to the others, "It's really nice, come on in!"

Cole went to the side of the pool, slipped neatly in, and promptly began a splash fight with Jay.

Ghost and Kai stayed back.

"Come on, boys," Lord Garmadon encouraged, and he headed for the pool stairs with the two trotting just behind him.

"I still don't like water," Kai declared, but he stared at the ongoing splash fight with such longing that Lord Garmadon called Jay and Cole over to give some surreptitious rules about no holding each other under so that Kai could be close enough to start up some splashing.

"How about you, Ghost? Do you like water?" Lord Garmadon asked once Kai was engaged in the splash fight.

Ghost seemed to think about for a second, then his legs collapsed from under him and he disappeared under the water.

"Ghost!" Lord Garmadon gasped, and he almost went under himself to rescue the boy, until he saw Ghost staring up at him from the bottom of the pool and looking quite content.

Ghost came up for a breath, flashed a grin, then went under again.

"You are a weird, weird child, Ghost," Lord Garmadon told him seriously, then yelled, "Blood! If I see you holding Storm under for a second more, you're not leaving my side for the rest of the pool party!"

"Whatever, Dad," Kai yelled back, but he let Jay up.

They splashed around for a long time, getting slower and slower with their antics. Finally, when Jay ducked underwater and came up choking because he forget not to hold his breath and Cole started laughing at him with that helpless amusement that comes from tiredness, Lord Garmadon called it quits. He ushered the boys out of the pool, back into the changing shack, and into their old clothes, but it took a bit as tiredness was setting in. Finally, Lord Garmadon got them back into their dry things and brought them into the cavern.

When they went back into the main entryway, Mezmo was waiting for them. "Have a good time, boysss?"

"Good," Jay said happily, leaning against Kai's side.

"Very," Cole sighed contentedly, leaning against Lord Garmadon's side.

Ghost nodded and yawned.

"I'm going to take them back to their room," Lord Garmadon addressed the Serpentine, eyes falling on the Megaweapon where it lay forgotten against one wall. "I want you to take the Megaweapon back to my room."

Mezmo shrugged and picked up the Megaweapon, but as the Serpentine walked away, Mezmo gave Lord Garmadon a long, calculating look over one shoulder.

"What?" Lord Garmadon demanded, suddenly hyper-aware that he had just wasted a lot of valuable training time and one day's Megaweapon wish on amusing the same four boys he had been meaning to be training.

Still walking away, Mezmo stared Lord Garmadon down over one shoulder. Then, just before disappearing around the corner, Mezmo said evenly, "You have a flower in your hair."

* * *

"Okay, what is with the weather today?!" Nya exclaimed exasperatedly, gesturing forcefully at the once-more sunny outdoors.


	9. I love you, good night

**AN: Welcome to chapter nine of "Nature Versus Nurture!" I refer to this chapter as "the _Despicable Me_ chapter" because, well, it reminds me of _Despicable Me_ , or the foreshadowing chapter, because when I went back and edited it I just threw foreshadowing in willy-nilly. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "There Goes My Life" by Kenny Chesney, "I love you, good night, there goes my life." ****The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "I'm Not In Love" by 10CC, "It's just a silly phrase I'm going through" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie, "It's personal, myself and I, we've got some straightening out to do."**

* * *

"All right, you little rascals, time for bed," Lord Garmadon growled playfully.

"But we're not tired! We don't want to go to bed!" Kai complained loudly, bouncing up and down on his bed with an excess of energy.

"Yeah, well, I'm tired, and that means it's bedtime," Lord Garmadon stated plainly. It had been a long day of training broken up only by meals, bathroom breaks (a surprisingly constant and common occurrence, Lord Garmadon didn't think his- the boys, THE boys, he meant 'the', not 'his'- boys drank that much, yet one of them was always whining about needing to go), and the occasional board game.

"We could do something that doesn't need a lot of energy," Cole offered. "Then you won't get any more tired."

"And wwwe wwwon't have to go to bbbed jjjust yet!" Jay cheered, thrusting his fists in the air at what he considered a victory.

Cole shushed him quickly.

Lord Garmadon laughed a little at their antics. "All right, all right. I suppose we could do something that doesn't need a lot of energy."

"Something fun," Kai added. "It's gotta be something fun, okay?"

"Something fun," Jay echoed, nodding eagerly.

"Soooo, knitting?" Lord Garmadon offered.

Kai faked gagging.

"No, something fun!" Jay shouted, probably not even knowing what "knitting" was but knowing the joking tone of his father's voice.

"Puzzles?" Lord Garmadon

"I like pppuzzles," Jay agreed amiably.

He was quickly overruled by Kai shouting, "No, something fun!"

"Drinking prune juice?" Lord Garmadon suggested, barely holding in his laughter.

"No, something fun!" Cole gave in and repeated.

"Something fun, hmmm?" Lord Garmadon mock-thought about that for a moment. "How about… A movie!"

"A movie?" Cole and Kai gasped in unison, hopping off their beds. They turned to each other and fistbumped.

"A mmmovie, a mmmovie, a m-m-movie!" Jay cheered, turning to Ghost and shaking him excitedly.

Ghost looked very confused.

"I'll get the Serpentine to bring in a TV and some sort of movie player, I'm not up to date on movie technology. Oh, and some movie choices," Lord Garmadon added.

"Can we get _Daffy Dale: the M-marvelous M-movie_?" Jay squealed.

Lord Garmadon blinked at him. "I'm- not sure, but we can try. Spitta, Lasha!"

The two Venomari looked up, Spitta glancing up from a puzzle and Lasha taking a break from trying to "solve" a bead maze.

"I want you to go out and get a TV, some sort of thing to play movies on the TV, and some movies to go in the player. Pick age-appropriate movies, stuff my- these boys would like," Lord Garmadon ordered.

"Ssso, no _Poisssonousss Sssweetiess From_ -" Lasha began.

Spitta elbowed him quickly and said, "Yeah, probably not. We're on it, Lord Garmadon."

The two scurried out the door.

"What's a Daffy Dale?" Cole wondered out loud after a moment.

Jay gasped. "You've never read or wwwatched Daffy Dale?"

"Mostly I read choreography manuals and watch old musicals," Cole admitted.

Frowning, Jay asked, "Wwwhat's a choreography?"

"What's a Daffy Dale?" Cole repeated.

"What's a choreography?" Jay shot back.

"Daffy Dale," Cole said again, smiling.

"Choreography," Jay said again, distinctly not smiling.

"How about you tell Storm what choreography is and then he tells you what Daffy Dale is, Midnight," Kai suggested lazily, leaning back against his bed.

"Yeah. B-but you go first, 'cause I'm curious," Jay ordered, drawing himself up to his full height of almost-but-not-quite reaching Cole's shoulder.

Cole laughed. "Okay, fine. Sure thing. 'Choreography' is how you're supposed to move around in like a dance or a play or things like that."

"Why would you read about that?" Kai butted in, scrunching up his face in distaste.

Cole shrugged, a little sheepishly Lord Garmadon noted. "Dunno. If you grew up in my house, you probably would too."

"Okay, now I get to tell you about Daffy Dale!" Jay cheered.

Before the little boy could expand on his choice of media, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," Lord Garmadon called.

Spitta poked his head in through the doorway. "We've got the ssstuff."

"That was quick," Lord Garmadon commented.

"After the whole 'weather day' thing, Skales moved samples of every weird thing you could possssssibly want down to the room down the hall," Spitta explained.

Lord Garmadon hummed thoughtfully. On one hand, taking initiative to help out was a handy feature in henchmen, or henchsnakes if one was inclined to say so. On the other hand, he definitely didn't want Skales to get too much initiative…

"Anyway, we got the stuff," Spitta stated again, clearly tired of waiting for Lord Garmadon to finish thinking and wanting to prompt the man.

"And it'sss heavy!" Lasha complained from somewhere behind him.

"Ssstop complaining, you big baby. After all, I grabbed the TV and the ssstand. You've only got the media player and the moviesss," Spitta reprimanded, walking into the room toting a large television screen and a bench to put it on.

Lasha followed, a media player and a box propped up in his arms. "Moviesss weigh more than you think, Ssspitta."

"Mmmovies!" Jay cheered, distracted from his mission to bring his brothers in on everything he knew about Daffy Dale. He dashed over to Lasha, following the snake from the door to the side of the room where Lasha placed down the media player and box of movies down next to the bench and TV that Spitta had just placed there. "Lemme see the m-movies, lemme see!"

"I wanna see too," Kai protested predictably, heading over to the movie box and peering in alongside Jay. "Oooo, we got a lot of options here."

"Like what?" Cole asked,starting to head toward the newly made movie area. After a few steps, he stopped and turned around, going back, grabbing Ghost, and pulling the smallest boy over the movie box with him.

" _Daffy Dale: the Mmmarvelous Mmmovie_ , _Daffy Dale: the Spectacular Sequel_ , _Daffy Dale: the Passable Prequel_ , even _Daffy Dale: the Substandard Straight-to-TV-Special_?" Jay squealed, pulling a set of movies from the box.

"Oh, I've seen those. I don't like them, but my sister does," Kai remarked, then he gasped and grabbed a movie out for himself. " _The Grand Time-Travel Allegiance_? But I thought that didn't come out for another year! How?"

"Your father has his ways," Lord Garmadon said merrily, all the while sending death glares at Spitta and Lasha for not picking movies appropriate for the age the boys had come from.

" _Clutch Powers_!" Cole cheered, clutching a movie to his chest.

"Wwwhat's that you have there, Ghost?" Jay asked, prying a movie away from the younger boy. " _Age of the Assassin Androids_? Is that even a kids movie?"

Ghost shrugged and scuffed the floor with one foot.

"I want to watch that one," Kai butted in, prying the movie from Jay in turn.

"I don't," Jay said, and he pulled the movie back from Kai and tossed it into the box. "How about _Pppeculiar Pppirates: the Complete Collection_? I like p-pirates."

"No you don't, you like androids," Kai insisted, pulling the movie he and Ghost had chosen back out of the box.

"I don't think you even know wwwhat an android is," Jay said, scowling at Kai but not dismissing the point. "Bbbesides, that mmmovie looks scary. It looks like p-people wwwould get hurt or killed in it. I don't like that at all. Dad? Are wwwe even allowed to w-watch that one?"

"I don't think so," Lord Garmadon concluded. "Give it here, Blood."

"Awww. I wanted to watch someone bite it," Kai groaned, but he relinquished the movie and looked back into the box. "What about this one, _Dragon Den_? It's a cartoony movie, and it's got awesome dragons on the cover."

"Does it look scary?" Jay asked, jumping up and down to try and see the movie case over Kai's shoulder.

"Nah, it looks funny," Kai said, turning and showing Jay the cover.

Jay considered it, then said, "I'd be okay with that one."

"Midnight?" Kai asked, turning the tallest boy and brandishing the movie at him.

"I still kind of want _Clutch Powers_ , but I could compromise for _Dragon Den_ ," Cole allowed. "I've seen it before and I like it. The dragons are a little scary, but-"

"What, you scared of dragons?" Kai teased playfully.

"No, not the cartoon ones!" Cole defended. "The cartoon ones are fine, I'm not scared, I said I'd compromise!"

"Wwwhat about you, Ghost?" Jay asked eagerly, getting into the idea of the movie Kai had picked.

Ghost looked thoughtful, then he held out his hands.

Kai placed the movie carefully into the littlest boy's grasp.

Tilting his head to one side then the other, Ghost scrutinized the movie cover. He tapped on a large dragon on the case's cover, the only one in chains, then looked up at the older three boys.

"Oh, that's Johnny. He gets captured by the evil king and forced to keep the lonely princess captive, but he doesn't want to, and the other dragons get worried and go out to find him and, well, I'm not gonna give away the whole story, but he gets away in the end. Everything turns out okay, " Cole concluded.

Ghost nodded decisively. Turning to Lord Garmadon, Ghost held the movie up toward the man.

"Everyone wants _Dragon Den_? Okay, great," Lord Garmadon said, taking the movie case from Ghost. He opened it up, took the movie out, and placed into the media player that Spitta had just connected to the TV. Lord Garmadon turned on both the media player and the TV to reveal the menu screen of the movie.

"Don't start it yet! I gotta move the couch in front of the TV!" Kai exclaimed, running over to the couch by the bookshelf. He valiantly shoved at the couch, trying to move it, for a solid fifteen seconds, before admitting, "Okay, maybe that's more of a 'us' thing than a 'I' thing. Dad!"

"Spitta, Lasha, move the couch," Lord Garmadon said immediately.

The two Serpentine grumbled complaints at being asked to move more things, but they did as he asked, heaving the couch in front of the TV and huffing all the while.

"Very good. Now go make us popcorn," Lord Garmadon ordered, picking up the remote and sitting on the couch.

"Pppopcorn!" Jay cheered

"With butter and salt?" Kai checked, looking to Lord Garmadon.

"With butter and salt," Lord Garmadon called after the two Serpentine exiting to do his bidding.

"Woo hoo!" Kai whooped, throwing his hands in the air. He ran at the couch in its new position, jumped over the back of it, and flopped down next to Lord Garmadon.

"Oh, I love popcorn," Cole said reverently, joining Kai and their "father" on the couch and wriggling back to place himself snugly in between them.

"C'mon Ghost, let's sit down," Jay encouraged, pulling the little boy after him. The two youngest sat on the couch on Lord Garmadon's other side.

"Everyone ready?" Lord Garmadon asked, looking around at his- the, the boys.

"Ready!" Kai and Jay chorused.

"Wait!" Cole blurted out. He untangled himself from between Kai and Lord Garmadon and ran over to the door, flipped the light switch next to the door so that the room went dark except for the light coming from the TV and a bit of light that snuck in from the hallway outside, then ran back and snuggled back his position on the couch. "Okay, ready."

Ghost nodded eagerly.

Lord Garmadon hit "play" on the remote and the movie began.

It was a good movie, a bit nonsensical and rather on the childish side, but that was only to be expected of a cartoon. Lord Garmadon, however, gave up on watching the movie maybe a quarter of the way through in favor of watching something more than a little more interesting: his (the) boys.

Cole really enjoyed the movie. He mouthed the lines along with the characters and outright quoted along with the movie on more than one occasion, leading to Kai scolding him into quiet each time, but Cole had an indomitable spirit and kept going.

Kai enjoyed the movie too. Sure, he bounced up and down and fidgeted during the exposition, but by the time Johnny the dragon was kidnapped, he too was captivated, but by the movie rather than by an evil king.

Jay seemed to love the movie. From the moment the first dragon flew across the sky, his eyes were glued to the screen and his mouth hung open slightly, except for when he laughed along with the movie, which was often.

Ghost, well, Lord Garmadon wasn't sure how Ghost felt about the movie. Ghost smiled and frowned in all the right places, but he also fell asleep the moment Johnny got to safety and stayed asleep throughout the rest of the movie.

But then again…

By the time the credits rolled and Lord Garmadon looked to the boys to see how they had enjoyed the end (which Lord Garmadon had simply had to watch for himself, it was too good), all the boys were asleep. Kai's head was lolled on Cole's shoulder, Cole's own head rested on top of Kai's, Jay was slumped into Lord Garmadon's stomach, and Ghost was lying down across Jay's lap.

Carefully, Lord Garmadon extracted himself from the group of sleeping children. As soon as he left, the four boys collapsed on each other, forming a lump of arms and legs and torsos and heads all flung across and under and around each other.

Lord Garmadon couldn't help it. He chuckled at the sight of the sweet spectacle made by his boys.

His boys.

HIS boys.

Lord Garmadon froze. They were HIS boys now, weren't they? They were his, and he was theirs. Something warm and sweet bloomed in Lord Garmadon's chest at the thought, something he thought just might be called "love."

Groaning softly under his breath and trying (and failing) to suppress the feeling, Lord Garmadon shook his head at himself and muttered, "How do you get yourself into these things, Garmadon?"

"Somethin' wrong, Dad?" Kai asked sleepily, waking up a little as Lord Garmadon spoke.

"Nothing wrong, Blood, go back to sleep," Lord Garmadon said automatically, responding to the title as if he had been born to it.

Kai yawned and rolled over, almost rolling right off the couch.

Lord Garmadon caught him narrowly and gingerly hefted him up, using all four arms to be as gentle as possible. After a moment of indecision, he carried Kai to his bunk bed and setting the boy gently on it, but not without pulling down the bedding before and tucking Kai in after.

"Might as well get them all in bed. They need their rest, they've been working so hard for me," Lord Garmadon thought fondly.

He returned to the couch and surveyed the remaining three boys. They were intertwined, arms splayed across each other, legs tucked under each other, hands tucked into each other's hair and gripping each other's shirt fronts.

Carefully, Lord Garmadon untangled the easiest of the group, Cole, setting aside Jay's right hand from where it had been grabbing Cole's shirt sleeve and lifting Ghost's head momentarily to get Cole's chest out from under him. He picked the oldest boy up, cradling him slightly.

Cole murmured something indistinct and snuggled into Lord Garmadon.

He took Cole to his bed, tucking the oldest boy in, then returned to survey the two littlest ones to find that Jay and Ghost were almost inseparably tangled.

Lord Garmadon sighed fondly, then set to work. After several minutes of gingerly scooching the little limbs around, he finally pried Ghost out of Jay's grasp and was able to put the smallest boy happily to bed.

Coming back to the couch, it was easy work for Lord Garmadon to pick up Jay and carry him to bed. When he put the boy down, though, he got a surprise.

Jay's eyes were open, and he was looking up at the man. The little boy smiled sleepily up at the startled Lord Garmadon, then closed his eyes and whispered, "Love you."

"Love you too," Lord Garmadon said back automatically, his voice all choked up for some reason (who was he kidding, he knew exactly what reason).

"W-we all love you. I j-just think you oughta know that," Jay said, eyes still closed and voice drifting off as he drifted back into sleep even as he spoke.

"And I love all of you," Lord Garmadon whispered.

And, as he left the room with heart full and hands empty, Lord Garmadon found that he meant it.


	10. We keep this love in a photograph

**AN: Welcome to the tenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Herein lies the return of Schrödinger's shoes. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Photograph" by Ed Sheeran, "We keep this love in a photograph, we keep these memories for ourselves." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Naughty" by Matilda, "Mustn't let a little thing like little stop you"; "Temporary Home" by Carrie Underwood, "It's not where I belong"; and "Walk A Little Straighter" by Billy Currington, "I remember looking up to look up to him, and I remember most the time he wasn't there."**

* * *

"I don't want to take a picture," Kai complained, standing in the middle of the room in only his underwear, socks, a white t-shirt, and a massive pout.

"You don't want to train, you don't want to take a break from training, you don't want to play board games, you don't want to play card games, you don't want to nap, you don't want to stop napping, you don't want to go to bed, you don't want to get out of bed… Blood, I'm starting to think you don't want to do anything," Cole pointed out mildly. "Or really, I think you do and you just like to complain."

"Yeah, well, yeah, well, yeah, well," Kai searched for a suitable insult and seized upon one, "you got hit in the head by Bytar!"

"W-what does that have to do wwwith anything?" Jay wondered.

"Blood's just being silly," Cole said knowledgeably, and he turned to Lord Garmadon, tugging on the man's sleeve. "Dad, can you make Blood get dressed? He's distracting me from helping Ghost, and he's supposed to already be dressed to help Storm anyway."

"I don't need help!" Jay said predictably.

"Your shoes are on the wrong feet," Lord Garmadon said mildly. "And the shoelaces are tied to each other. It's okay to need help, Storm."

Jay scowled, an adorable expression when done by him, but he turned to Kai readily to await help in dressing up.

"Blood, put on your fancy clothes!" Lord Garmadon ordered, putting as much authority into the statement as possible.

Not budging, Kai stuck out his tongue and blew a loud raspberry.

"So that's the way you want to play it, hmm?" Lord Garmadon said mildly, and he took a fighting stance. "Battle me for it."

Gulping, Kai said quickly, "I don't think we're quite far enough in our training for that."

"If you want to challenge me, you are," Lord Garmadon stated, crooking a finger at Kai.

Kai nodded slowly. He began circling his father, eyeing the man up and down.

Lord Garmadon let him do so, figuring it wouldn't give the boy much of an advantage.

Suddenly, Kai lunged. One socked foot came up and kicked Lord Garmadon in the shin.

Cole and Jay ooohed, stopping what they were doing to watch. Ghost watched too, but he didn't verbally wince in response to the hit.

Lord Garmadon staggered sideways a smidge, simultaneously sweeping his non-injured leg toward Kai's base leg.

The root of Kai's stance was knocked back and Kai wobbled, quickly putting down his kicking leg and getting into a steadier fighting form.

Lord Garmadon didn't let him take a break, rotating around him and going for a jab at Kai's shoulder.

Kai dodged and returned a punch at Lord Garmadon's side. He didn't connect.

Lord Garmadon danced back just in time, twirling away.

"Get him!" Jay cheered, not making it clear who he was talking to and perhaps not even sure himself.

"Get him!" Cole repeated.

Maybe responding to his brothers, or maybe just caught up in the battle, Kai ran forward, meeting Lord Garmadon at the end of his avoidant spin with a slap to the stomach.

"Was that supposed to hurt?" Lord Garmadon teased, not even breathing harder from the hit.

"Kinda, but more it was supposed to distract you from THIS!" Kai crowed, going for a uppercut punch to the chin.

Lord Garmadon leaned back, then immediately leaned forward as soon as Kai's hand had gone out of his space. Raising both upper hands, Lord Garmadon delivered a hearty smack to Kai's shoulders.

The boy crumpled to the floor, but he rolled away as Lord Garmadon tried to pin him with a foot to the chest. Kai boasted, "Can't catch me!"

Lord Garmadon lightly jogged after the rolling boy, catching up before Kai could even reach the opposite side of the room. Jumping over the child, Lord Garmadon stopped him with a planted foot and pinned Kai down by the chest with the other foot.

Kai wriggled around and smacked the man's foot, trying to free himself in vain. Finally, he tapped the ground with one hand and said breathlessly, "I give, I give. Lemme up!"

Lord Garmadon smirked and did so, complimenting, "Well done."

"Learned from the best," Kai said, still huffing a little. "Did I do well enough to not hafta put on fancy clothes? Huh? Did I?"

Lord Garmadon let him wait for a moment, then said simply, "No."

"Awwww," Kai scowled.

"Go put on your good clothes, then help Storm with his shoes," Lord Garmadon said simply, then turned to the resident babysitter Serpentine, Lasha. "Go get Mezmo, wherever he is. We're almost ready for the picture."

Lasha snapped off a poorly-done mock salute and dashed out of the room.

"Midnight, are you and Ghost done?" Lord Garmadon asked, turning the oldest of his boys.

"Nearly done," Cole chirped, gently pulling Ghost's arms through the sleeves of a dress shirt.

Ghost flashed a grin at Lord Garmadon as his response.

"Very good," Lord Garmadon praised, ruffling Cole's hair. Trusting the duo to get ready on time, Lord Garmadon went to stand beside the middle two boys. "Storm? Blood? What. What are you doing?"

Kai gave a yowl of frustration, fully dressed but with his shirt bundled around his head and his arms up in the air.

"B-blood didn't unbutton his shirt bbbefore he p-put it on, so now he's stuck and tangled up, and he's scared of the dark, an' it's dark in there with all the fabric over his eyes, so now he's j-just freaking out," Jay explained eagerly, watching his brother with interest.

"'M not scared of the dark!" Kai protested, but his voice was choked with unshed tears.

Lord Garmadon sighed, but he kneeled and began untangling the boy. It took a minute of unbuttoning and straightening and re-buttoning, but he got Kai's shirt put on properly and Kai's tears wiped away on a spare sock.

"Look, Dad!" Jay exclaimed as soon as the man patted Kai on the head and stood up. The second-smallest boy pointed at his feet. "I got my shoes on right all b-by myself. Are you ppproud of me?"

"No, you didn't, I did it," Cole interjected. "He should be proud of me instead."

Jay wilted.

"I'm proud of you for accepting help, Storm, and I'm proud of you for giving help, Midnight," Lord Garmadon said quickly, wanting to keep his boys from fighting.

Jay and Cole both straightened up happily.

"What is taking Lasha and Mezmo so long?" Lord Garmadon mused. "We already have all the photographer equipment, so it shouldn't be taking them so long."

He looked at the door, then at his boys, then at the door again, then, finally, back at his boys.

Slowly, Lord Garmadon said, "Boys, would you be okay on your own for a few minutes while I find Mezmo? It would just be for a moment."

"Can we play while we wait?" Kai asked quickly.

"You may, but you may only do things that have zero chance of ruining your fancy clothes," Lord Garmadon responded.

"But that takes out all the good stuff," Kai complained.

"Would you rather stand around and do nothing?" Lord Garmadon said mildly.

Kai frowned. "Nah. I guess I could play cars or something, just with crouching and not sitting or lying on the ground."

"I'll p-play with you!" Jay volunteered.

"I think I'm gonna read," Cole decided. "What about you, Ghost?"

Ghost pointed at Kai and Jay.

"Cars for three, then," Jay said with relish. "C'mon, let's get started."

Lord Garmadon watched as his boys got settled, Cole on the couch and the other three crouching over a box of toy cars on the rug, then he nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him and calling over his shoulder, "See you in a few!"

"I want that red sports car you've got. It looks like something you could use on a spy mission and I wanna do a spy mission," Kai told Jay.

"Okay, then I'll take this one and b-be the b-bad guy to your spy," Jay said, handing over the red car and picking up a purple van.

"What do you wanna have, Ghost?" Kai asked. "You could have the gold truck, or the white convertible, or the brown car."

Ghost considered his options, then he picked up a pink motorcycle.

"Or you could pick the one that isn't even a car. Of course you would," Kai said resignedly.

"Forget Ghost's not-car, get your car over here and b-battle my b-bad guy! He's gonna take over the wwworld if you let him!" Jay insisted, wheeling his van in circles around his own feet.

"Do you think Wu's gonna take over the world?" Cole said abruptly.

Kai, Jay, and Ghost looked up from their toys.

"Where did that thought come from?" Kai asked, wrinkling his face up in confusion.

Cole shrugged from behind his book. "Dunno. Storm just said that his bad guy's gonna take over the world, and in this book there's a bad guy, so I was thinking about bad guys, and now I'm thinking about Wu, 'cause he's the real bad guy in real life."

Kai considered that, then he dropped his car. "Yeah, okay, I can see that. I've been thinking about Wu too. When are we gonna be ready to face him?"

"W-we've b-been training for w-what feels like forever," Jay said thoughtfully. "Almost as long as w-we've known Dad."

"And like, how are we, a bunch of kids supposed to fight a bad guy?" Cole said, dropping his book and throwing his hands up in the air.

Ghost pointed at Cole, as if to say "that's a good point."

"Dad said we're destined to stop him, so we're gonna," Kai said firmly.

"But shouldn't we know more about him before we fight him? In books and movies, they're always going on about 'gathering intelligence' and 'studying the villain' and stuff like that. We should learn all we can about Wu before we face him," Cole figured.

"Mmmaybe w-we can ask some of the Serpentine," Jay suggested.

Kai's face lit up. "Or maybe, we can spy on them."

Jay gasped. "Yeah! Let's b-be spies!"

"I don't know if that's a good idea. How would we even do it?" Cole doubted.

"Like this," Kai said confidently, and he walked to the door and opened it.

"Whoa, where are you going?" Cole asked.

"There's that storage room that Snappa told Dad about, the one that holds all the stuff we need. I bet the Serpentine are in and out of there all the time, refreshing and moving stuff. All we gotta do is get in there and hide for long enough to hear some of 'em talking," Kai stated.

Jay bounced up and down all the way to the Kai's side. "I like this ppplan. Let's do it!"

"Uh, maybe we should wait for a time when we know we'll be alone for longer? I don't want Dad coming back to an empty room and freaking out," Cole said, then he paused. "But then again, we're never alone, and while we could maybe trick Lasha or Spitta into leaving us for a bit, it wouldn't be long enough to get to the supply room, hide, overhear a conversation, unhide, and get back without them getting suspicious. Y'know what, I agree with Storm. Let's do it."

Cole walked to the door, then he looked back. "Ghost, c'mon."

Ghost looked unconvinced.

"You don't have to come. We could just leave you here, alone, for Dad to come back to, alone, and get mad and sad at," Kai pointed out.

"W-we need you to come," Jay added. "It's gotta b-be all of us."

Finally, Ghost nodded and joined them at the door.

"Okay. So that supply room should be really close. Left or right?" Cole asked.

"Left," Jay said.

At the same time, Kai said, "Right."

Cole closed his eyes and began pointing back and forth between the two sides of the hallway. "Eenie meenie miney moe, catch a Grundle by the toe, if it hollers let it go, eenie meenie miney moe, my dad says to pick the very best one and you are it!"

He opened his eyes to see himself pointing at the left hall. "Left it is."

"We're letting our awesome spy mission be directed by eenie meenie miney moe?" Kai said, sounding slightly disgusted.

"Yup," Cole said firmly, and he began walking left, disappearing around a corner.

Jay and Ghost followed him.

Kai sighed, then he began jogging after them to the left, hissing, "Wait up!"

He didn't have to jog for long. Just around the corner, his three brothers were standing in front of a door.

"Is that the storage room?" Kai asked loudly.

Cole shushed him.

"Is that the storage room?" Kai asked at a medium volume.

Jay shushed him.

"Is that the storage room?" Kai asked quietly.

Ghost put a hand over his own mouth then pointed meaningfully at Kai.

"What are you doing?" Kai hissed.

Cole turned to him and said, so quietly that Kai could barely hear it, "I don't know if it's the storage room, but there are Serpentine inside. We saw them walk in, but they didn't see us, I don't think. It's Snappa and Skales, and if you're quiet you'll hear 'em talking."

Kai was quiet, and after a second faint voices reached him from through the door.

"-you really should try taking care of the boysss, you'd enjoy it," Snappa was saying.

"Not me," Skales responded. "It was hard enough not ssspeaking up about the truth when Lord Garmadon had me bring them thingsss at the beginning, I wouldn't be able to keep quiet now."

"The truth?" Kai repeated under his breath.

"I find that hard myssself, when faced with thossse sssweet little facesss," Snappa admitted. "But if you keep telling yourssself you're doing it for the sssake of evil and getting back at the people of Ninjago, then it'sss much easssier."

"Evil?" Jay gasped.

"Yeah, at firssst I thought kidnapping the boysss and making them fight Wu, really the top good guy, asss if he wasss the top bad guy, wasss a terrible idea, but now it might jussst be worth it. Lord Garmadon'sss a jerk, but he'sss a fantastic villain," Skales replied.

There was silence, inside the room and outside it.

Slowly, Ghost began backing away from the door. Then Jay followed suit, then Kai, then Cole. Ever so slowly, the four boys made their way back to their room in silence, went inside in silence, and closed the door in silence.

Then the freak-out began.

"Dad's the villain!" Kai screeched.

"I can't deal with this, I can't deal with this, I can't deal with this!" Jay moaned, dropping to the ground and curling up in a ball.

Ghost's eyes were squeezed shut in horror and his hands were over his mouth.

"Guys, we gotta be quiet still. Who knows when Dad's coming back," Cole hissed. "We don't want him discovering we know the truth, if that is the truth."

"How can you say that what we heard might not be the truth when it's straight from the fangs of the villain's underlings?" Kai scoffed.

"Dad's evil, Dad's evil!" Jay said hysterically.

"First, you're both assuming Dad's the bad guy based on a conversation we totally could've heard out of context. One time, I heard my first dad talking out of context and I thought he hated me when really he hated what one of my couches was having me do for a routine," Cole pointed out.

"Wwwhat context wwwould explain a conversation like that?" Jay questioned from his spot on the ground.

Cole paused. "...I don't know, but we've gotta look at the facts and keep our cool, just in case Dad really is the bad guy, which I don't think he is. So let's go back to our spots where we were playing and pick a conversation topic for when we hear Dad coming back."

"Okay, fine, we'll do this your way," Kai relented, returning to the place and position where he had been driving his sports car around and taking that car from the ground.

"If Dad or a Serpentine comes bbback, Kai and I can talk about our cars bbbeing spies, but I wwwant bbboth of us to be good guys this time," Jay said firmly, picking up his own car and sitting up before dusting himself off.

Ghost trotted over to his pink motorcycle, picked it up, and crouched, then looked up at Cole.

"So. The facts. Fact one: we heard two Serpentine talking about Dad being evil, Wu being good, and us being kidnapped. That sounds bad, but if it's the only thing that Dad has against him, we shouldn't trust it," Cole stated, sitting on the couch and picking up his book but not looking at it.

"Fact two: Dad named us Ghost, Storm, Blood, and Midnight. Those are scary things and classic villain names," Kai pointed out.

"Fact three: Dad is named Lord Garmadon. That's a villain name too, and he has wwweird assistants, wwwhich is a typical villain thing," Jay added.

"Fact four: Dad is having us train to fight some guy based on the fact that Dad says he's bad and we're supposed to stop him, when we're kids," Cole mused, frowning.

"Fact five: Skales said wwwe wwwere kidnapped. To get kidnapped bbby someone, you gotta get kidnapped from someone," Jay said quietly.

Kai put together the pieces mentally. "Which means our families are probably still alive. And Dad lied about that."

The other three boys froze.

"That's it. That's all the facts," Cole said heavily. "What do you guys think?"

"Dad's a bbbad guy, a villain, and he's trying to mmmake us bbbe villains too, to hurt some guy named Wu who ppprobably never did a thing to Dad," Jay said tearfully.

Ghost's lower lip was trembling heavily, but he nodded.

Kai nodded, his hands clenched tightly into fists.

Cole nodded at them. "I think so too. I can't think of any other way around it."

"Should we even call him 'Dad'?" Jay wondered fretfully. "I don't want to be a bad guy, and I don't want to bbbe a bbbad guy's son either. Maybe he's not our dad anymore?"

"He lied about everything, he's bad, and he's trying to make us be bad too. A dad wouldn't do that," Cole said firmly. "He's not our dad."

"What do we even do, then?" Kai thought out loud. "We can't stop training to fight Wu, 'cause then Da- Garmadon would get suspicious. We can't run away, 'cause we're in the middle of a desert. We can't call for help, 'cause we're surrounded by Garmadon's assistants. We can't even plan for long, 'cause soon Snappa and Garmadon are gonna come back with the photos and then we're gonna have to call him 'Dad' again."

"We wait," Cole said firmly. "We wait, we, uh, bide our time, like heroes do, not like villains. And, when we get the chance, we go to Wu."

At that moment, the boys heard voices outside the room.

Cole looked down at his book intensely.

Ghost clutched his motorcycle to his chest.

Quickly, Jay said, "And then mmmy car drives to the spy headquarters to p-pick up his next m-mission, vroom vroom vrooooom."

"Well, my car is waiting there, and he says that he and your car are going on a mission together, to, uh, Ninjago City," Kai shot back.

The door opened and Lord Garmadon and Mezmo walked in.

"Hey, boysss," Mezmo greeted coolly.

"Hi, Mmmezmo," Jay said fearfully.

"Hi, Mezmo," Kai and Cole repeated nervously.

"Why ssso jittery? Do you not like picturesss?" Mezmo asked.

"Not a big fan," Cole admitted.

"It'll be fine, kiddos," Lord Garmadon assured, and he clapped his hands. "Let's do this."

"Sssit on the couch, Lord Garmadon," Mezmo instructed, and Lord Garmadon did so. "Midnight, you go on hisss right ssside. Blood, you go on hisss left. Ssstorm, go next to Midnight. Ghossst, you go next to Blood."

Slowly, the boys did as they were told.

Mezmo peered through the camera that was already set up for him and nodded in approval. "Yesss, that'sss it. Looking good. Sssit up ssstraight, everyone. Look at me. Okay, now sssmile!"

The boys did so, smiling as naturally as they could.

Mezmo clicked a button, and the camera flashed. "Perfect on the firssst try. Wow."

"Thank you, Mezmo. Please make five copies of that photo, one for me and one for each of my boys," Lord Garmadon said happily, smiling warmly down at the quartet.

Cole and Jay returned the smile hesitantly, Ghost did a crooked little half-smile, and Kai barely even tried.

"It's fine, boys, we don't have to do another picture," Lord Garmadon reassured, incorrectly assuming the reason for the boys' unresponsiveness. "In fact, you can get changed back into your normal clothes."

Kai gave a large, genuine smile at that and hopped off the couch, running to the pile of casual clothes he had left behind what felt like so long ago. His brothers followed suit.

"Once you're changed, we can have a little fun before training. I'm thinking a card game, but I'll be open to suggestion," Lord Garmadon allowed to a chorus of cheers.

But as they changed, and as they played the card game they selected, and as they trained, and even onward, one thought echoed through the minds of Cole, Kai, Jay, and Ghost.

"We wait, and we go to Wu."


	11. I'll find a way to block it

**AN: Welcome to the eleventh chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" We're half-way through the story; for all you readers wondering why "Ghost" isn't speaking and when he will talk, don't worry, there's a reason and it's coming. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "La La La ft. Sam Smith" by Naughty Boy, "If my heart can't stop it, I'll find a way to block it." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Ships in the Night" by Matt Kearney, "We can feel so far from so close" and "Someone Like You" by Adele, "Nevermind, I'll find someone like you."**

* * *

Wu clapped his hands together. "Are we ready? Let's check off the list, now."

"Samurai X suit, check," Nya said obligingly, gesturing at her mech.

"Green ninja suit, check," Lloyd said half-jokingly, pointing at the clothes he was wearing.

"Map of Lord Garmadon's recent activity, check," Nya stated.

"Map of recent possible sightings of the ninja, check," Lloyd reported.

"Recent photo of the ninja, check," Wu added. "Okay then, I believe we're ready."

* * *

"Ready, set, fight!" Lord Garmadon instructed.

Neither boy moved.

"You know, you're going to lose," Cole said casually.

"Right, and then Ghost's going to finally say something," Kai said brightly. "And then we'll all chow down on Dad's condensed good and grubs for lunch, and then he'll let us play for the rest of the day instead of training like we always do."

"Ooo, snap," Jay commented. He was lying on the floor on his belly, head propped up in his hands, watching the fight intently.

Cole kicked at the floor and watched as Kai twitched at the sound. Then Cole launched himself through the air. He smacked into Kai, their heads collided, and both boys reeled back, groaning.

"Get bbback in there, get bbback in there," Jay coached.

Kai recovered first, and he swung at the side of Cole's head.

Cole dodged. He grabbed for Kai's wrist as it passed him by and squeezed roughly.

Yelping, Kai jerked back, successfully yanking his hand out of Cole's grasp and flapping it a little to get feeling back into his fingers.

Cole didn't let up. As Kai recovered, Cole lunged, going for a grab around the torso for a hopeful tackle to the ground.

Kai looked up just in time to say "Eek!"

Cole slammed into him, grabbing him around the torso and flinging him to the ground.

"Get off, get off," Kai squealed, worming around and managing to free himself narrowly. Kai rolled into a kneeling position facing Cole.

Cole took a deep breath, leaned back, then leaned forward and ran at Kai.

Kai threw himself out of the way and grinned cockily, regaining his confidence. In doing so, he didn't think about Cole's position.

Cole threw himself at Kai's back, tackling the smaller boy to the ground and pinning him with Cole's knees on Kai's torso.

Kai wriggled valiantly, throwing punch after punch at Cole's face, but his arms just weren't long enough. He realized this and instead went for Cole's arm, grabbing a pinch of skin and twisting viciously.

Cole grunted, but didn't move.

Desperately, Kai's fingers danced up and down both of Cole's arms, pinching and clawing.

Resiliently, Cole still didn't move.

Kai sighed and went limp. "Okay, whatever, you win. Now get off'a me."

Cole grinned and stood, sticking out a hand.

Kai smiled back and took the offered hand, heaving himself up.

"Midnight, excellently done. Good job staying with your opponent despite the pain, but don't forget to keep track of where all your body parts are. If Kai had recovered any quicker when your heads collided, he might have gained the upper hand," Lord Garmadon stated.

Cole nodded. "Got it. I'll keep that in mind for next time."

"Blood, pretty good. You kept fighting when you were doomed and managed to escape multiple times. However, you need to keep track of your opponent's body. Always be thinking, not only about your next move will be, but what your opponent's next move might be," Lord Garmadon instructed.

Kai shrugged, looking away deliberately. "Yeah, sure."

Lord Garmadon eyed him, then he shrugged. "Close enough to confirmation for me. Storm, Ghost, you're up."

"I don't w-w-wanna," Jay complained, but he heaved himself up off the ground and walked to stand in front of Lord Garmadon anyway.

"Ghost. Ghost. Ghost, are you paying attention?" Lord Garmadon asked

The smallest boy looked up from his hands, which he had been fiddling, and blinked up at his "father", tilting his head to one side.

"Evidently not," Lord Garmadon said resignedly over Jay's giggles at his little brother's behavior. "Ghost, buddy, we're sparring."

Ghost leaped up and ran over to Lord Garmadon, holding up his little hands in a fighting stance.

"No, not you and me sparring, you and Storm," Lord Garmadon said loudly over Jay's, Kai's, and Cole's shared case of the giggles.

"You did say 'we'," Kai pointed out smartly.

"Quiet in the peanut gallery," Lord Garmadon demanded.

"What's a p-peanut gallery?" Jay murmured to Ghost.

The smaller boy just shrugged.

Lord Garmadon sighed and held both his upper arms to his forehead. "Boys, I really need you to focus. Do you know what 'focus' means?"

"Pay attention," Cole said immediately. "We need to pay attention."

"But it's more fun not to pay attention," Kai added merrily.

"Boys. Let's focus," Lord Garmadon restated, then he looked to Jay and Ghost. "Are you prepared?"

Jay stretched elaborately, then he chirped, "Ready!"

Ghost didn't stretch; he just nodded and got into a fighting stance.

"Ready, set, fight!" Lord Garmadon commanded.

Immediately, Jay flew at Ghost, arms flailing.

Ghost dropped to the floor, letting Jay's arms swing right over him. The smallest boy rolled to one side and hopped back up, returning to a fighting stance.

Jay turned on his heel and faced Ghost. He swung at Ghost's shoulder with his right fist.

Ghost batted Jay's right hand away, but he didn't have time to block Jay's left hand, which came up in a fist and bopped the littlest boy in the eye. Ghost went down instantly.

Cole and Kai drew in a sharp breath simultaneously.

Jay hovered over Ghost, obviously uncertain whether to comfort or attack him.

Ghost made that choice for him. The smallest boy jackknifed up from the ground and punched Jay in the mouth.

Jay staggered back, but he recovered quickly, shaking his head violently to regain his balance. "So that's how wwwe're gonna p-play, huh? You got it."

Jay feinted one way, then the other, then back the first way.

Ghost, evidently tired of waiting for Jay, lunged forward, trying to drive his head into Jay's stomach.

Jay shoved him back by the face with both hands.

Ghost stumbled, tripping over his own feet and falling to the ground.

Jay dove at him, trying to cover the younger boy's body with his own and pin Ghost to the ground.

They tussled, rolling back and forth. At first Jay was on top, then Ghost. It went back and forth, until finally, Jay stayed on top for a solid fifteen seconds and Ghost stopped wriggling.

"You okay?" Jay asked him breathlessly.

Ghost nodded and reluctantly tapped the ground next to him, signalling that he gave up.

Jay let him go, and the two boys stood up together.

"Well fought, both of you. To be honest, I wasn't sure who was going to win for a minute there," Lord Garmadon praised.

"Does that mean you knew who was going to win our fight?" Kai demanded.

Lord Garmadon didn't answer that, instead saying, "Storm, obviously in battle you won't be concerned about your opponent, but you need to practice that now. You did well on faking him out, though."

"It's just hard not to be concerned about my brothers," Jay told him earnestly.

"It's my job to be concerned about them, your job is to fight them when I say so," Lord Garmadon instructed. He turned to Ghost. "Ghost, you have great timing, you're just not strong enough yet to pull off some of those maneuvers. Stick with ones based on intelligence and using your opponent's size and strength against them."

Ghost nodded.

At that moment, a knock came on the door.

"Come in," Lord Garmadon called.

Lizaru peered into the room. "Lord Garmadon? I have sssome important news."

"Well, get in here and tell it to me," Lord Garmadon said mildly.

"I wasssn't sure if you wanted the boysss hear it. Should I wait, or-" Lizaru trailed off.

"What is it about?" Lord Garmadon asked carefully.

"It'sss about Wu, sssir," Lizaru stated.

Lord Garmadon looked at his boys. They seemed a strange mix of excited for and dreading of the news, a decent response to the mention of the man who they thought murdered their parents and whom they would fight. "Go ahead and say it."

"He and his minionsss captured one of our own on a missssssion. But, inssstead of keeping him, they let him go with a messssssage," Lizaru said slowly.

Lord Garmadon raised an eyebrow. "And what was the message?"

"'We don't know what you're doing or what you want, but we know what we're doing and what we want. Come to sssuch-and-sssuch place at sssuch-and-sssuch time'," Lizaru stated.

Lord Garmadon interrupted. "They said 'such-and-such'?"

Lizaru shook his head lazily. "No, they had an actual place and time, I just don't remember it right now. I could go find out, or I could tell you the rest of the messssssage."

"What's the rest of the message?" Lord Garmadon prompted.

"'Come to sssuch-and-sssuch place at sssuch-and-sssuch time. We'll talk, you and me, one on one. Just bring the boysss,'" Lizaru quoted, then he fell silent.

Lord Garmadon thought about that for a long time, so long that Jay got nervous. He peeped, "Dad?"

"I'm just thinking, Storm, don't worry about it," Lord Garmadon said distractedly, still thinking.

"Can you think a little louder? I'm w-worried," Jay admitted.

"Sure. Right now, I'm thinking about if we should go. Obviously he knows I rescued you four, and he wants to get you, so we shouldn't go, but you boys have improved so quickly at fighting that between the five of us we could easily take Wu down, so we should go. Those are the two trains of thought I'm switching between," Lord Garmadon explained. "I think the latter, that is, the second one is better. We should go. We'll fight him, we'll take him down, and we'll score a huge victory."

His boys looked uneasy for some reason. It was probably just nerves at their first real fight, so Lord Garmadon dismissed it.

"That reminds me. I got something special for the occasion, I didn't expect it to come so soon, but they should be ready," Lord Garmadon said cheerily.

The boys' faces lit up in unison.

"Presents? Do we get presents?" Kai demanded, bouncing eagerly on the tips of his toes.

"I wwwanna get a somethin' special!" Jay said loudly.

"Calm down, you guys, or else we might not even get the gifts," Cole ordered his brothers.

Kai stopped bouncing and Jay wilted slightly.

"Don't worry, boys, you're fine and you will get the gifts," Lord Garmadon promised before turning back to Lizaru. "Go get that special sewing project i had some of the Serpentine working on."

"Sewing?" Kai objected as Lizaru nodded slowly and headed out the door. "I don't want a stupid sewing thing. I want a racecar!"

"It's p-probably something as cool as a racecar, isn't it, Dad?" Jay asked.

"Most certainly as cool as a racecar," Lord Garmadon promised. "Just wait and see."

"What should we do while we wait?" Cole pondered. He frowned. "Should we spar some more?"

"No!" Kai protested instantly. "No more sparring!"

Ghost shook his head "no" emphatically to show that he didn't want to spar further.

"Sorry, my boys. We need as much practice as we can get before we face Wu," Lord Garmadon said not unkindly.

"But we also need rest, so we're at the top of our game when we face Wu," Kai pointed out quickly. "So we shouldn't spar, we should, um, do something restful."

"What, like take a nap? You're honestly saying you'd be okay with taking nap?" Cole teased.

Kai sputtered momentarily, then he came up with, "No, naps can make us more tired when we wake up. We should watch a movie."

"Oh, because that doesn't make you tired at all. The last three times we watched something, at least one of us if not all of us were asleep by the end," Cole pointed out, then he he paused. "Well, except Dad, but he's not facing Wu on his own."

"No, I am not, especially if he's only showing up if I bring you four," Lord Garmadon said mildly.

"So what," Kai said dismissively. "Dad will wake us up and we'll be well-rested."

"I thought you just said naps make you tired?" Cole said smugly.

Kai opened his mouth to retort.

"Stop!" Jay interjected before Kai could get anything out. "Let's jjjust spar and get it over w-with. It's b-better than listening to you guys argue until Lizaru comes b-back."

A knock on the door sounded throughout the room.

"Too late," Lord Garmadon sighed. "Come in, Lizaru."

The Venomari entered, arms piled high with four boxes.

"Are those clothes boxes?" Cole asked, recognizing them quickly.

"Don't tell me I've gotta wear fancy stuff and fight Wu at the same time," Kai groaned.

"These are the opposite of fancy," Lord Garmadon promised, taking the boxes from Lizaru, one in each hand, and shooing the Serpentine out of the room. He handed the boxes to his boys one by one, coordinating the colors carefully. "Okay, on the count of three, open them. One… Two… Three!"

His boys ripped into the boxes immediately.

Cole was the first to unearth his gift from the tissue paper. He gasped loudly. "Dad! This is so cool!"

"Amazing!" Jay squealed shrilly.

Ghost held up his present and shook it out in front of him energetically, grinning all the while.

"I still want a racecar, but these are pretty nice," Kai admitted begrudgingly.

"Try them on, try them on," Lord Garmadon encouraged.

"Pants, then shirt, then headpiece," Cole instructed his younger brothers, the three of them nodding in response.

"I really like these pants, they're comfy," Kai declared, wiggling his way out of his sweatpants and into the new pair of pants.

Ghost sighed happily as he changed out his shirt for the new one and rubbed the fabric between his fingers. He walked up to Lord Garmadon and held up the bottom of his shirt.

"I already felt it when I instructed the Serpentine on how to best tailor them, but thank you for offering, Ghost," Lord Garmadon said fondly.

"How do I get this headpiece on?" Jay asked, holding up the fabric skeptically.

"Here, I'll help you," Cole volunteered, "I think it slips on like this, then goes over here, then you adjust that part and there! Kai, do you got Ghost?"

"Uh-huh," Kai said in the affirmative as he put the littlest boy's headpiece on for him.

"All right, stand in a line, let me look at you," Lord Garmadon fussed, wanting to see the finished product.

His boys did as they were told, getting into a line facing their father and smiling all the while.

Looking at his boys, Lord Garmadon was glad he had kept the ninja suits that he had taken off of the ninja when he had captured them and turned them into kids what felt like so long ago. It would be so sweet to face Wu with his former students in the same outfits, but changed to fit their new selves and decreased in size to fit its owner's own new smaller size.

Cole's shoulder pads and the rough textile connecting them over his shoulders had been dyed a very dark blue that was almost black, the color of midnight, although the buckles were still silver. His collar line had been sewed shut, eliminating the need for the white cloth formerly stitched beneath it. His pants were now embroidered with tiny stars. His belt had been turned into a sash and his headpiece, or rather mask, had a crescent moon just above the eye opening.

Kai's shoulder pads were bright red instead of shiny yellow. The shurikens had been removed from his belt and the belt itself had been dyed a lighter brown. The plating between his shoulders had been repurposed as buttons going up, down, and all around the opening of his shirt. His pants were sewn full of little droplets that gleamed when he moved like little beads of blood. Just above the eye opening of his headpiece-slash-mask was an emblem of a scar freshly scabbed over.

Jay's shoulder pads had been turned a light creamy blue. His metal arm covering had been torn apart, turned yellow, and sewn into patterns on his pants very akin to lightning bolts in a storm. His belt, like Cole's, was now a sash across his chest. Unlike Cole collar line, which had been sewn up, Jay's collar had been opened further up, or rather further down, and the white lining underneath replaced with pale blue. His headpiece-mask had, placed slightly above the eye opening, a symbol of a storm cloud.

Ghost's shoulder pads were made white and wrapped around his torso and legs, giving him, dare Lord Garmadon say it, ghostly appearance as light shone off of him. His brown pocket and its straps were reformed into a belt and his shurikens were, like Kai's, taken away. His mask, also known as his headpiece, was slightly crooked thanks to Kai's well-meaning adjustments and had a very very light green, almost white, circle right above the eye opening.

Stepping forward, Lord Garmadon straightened Ghost's mask-headpiece.

"How do we look, Dad?" Cole asked shyly.

"Perfect. My boys, you look perfect in your fight suits. Are you prepared? Anything you need? Snack break, bathroom break, anything?" Lord Garmadon asked.

"Yes, no, no, no, and no," Cole answered.

"I want a snack, but I don't need it," Kai admitted.

"Let's do this!" Jay cheered.

Ghost nodded simply.

Lord Garmadon grinned. "Okay then, I believe we're ready."


	12. Which way you're gonna fall

**AN: Welcome to the twelfth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" We've reached a turning point, kiddies, so hold onto your chairs (or couches, or beds, or whatever you're sitting on as you read this). The key song and its selection for this chapter is "It's Your Life" by Francesca Battistelli, "This is the moment, it's on the line, which way you're gonna fall." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Verge" featuring Aloe Blacc by Owl City, "Out on the verge of the rest of our lives"; "Dare You To Move" by Switchfoot, "Between who you are and who you could be, between how it is and how it could be"; and "It's Time" by Imagine Dragons, "I'm just the same as I was, oh don't you understand."**

* * *

"And you're sure you don't want us to come with you in there?" Nya asked worriedly.

"I told Garmadon that I would meet him one-on-one and I will," Wu said decisively.

"Seriously! You know he wouldn't follow up if he was the one calling the shots, so why should you?" Lloyd exploded.

"Lloyd, we are the good guys," Wu said patiently. "You know this. You know that we must fight with honor and trust our opponents to do as well as they can to do the same."

Lloyd kicked at the ground and leaned back against the side of the Destiny's Bounty. "Yeah, I know."

"What's gotten into you, kiddo?" Nya asked with no small amount of concern.

"I'm not a kid!" Lloyd protested.

Nya sighed. "I know, Lloyd, it's just habit. Seriously, what's up?"

"We're just- we're so close to finding out what my- what Lord Garmadon has done with Cole, Kai, Jay, and Zane. We're so close, but you and I can't go in there to negotiate," Lloyd groaned. "It makes me so mad, doesn't it make you mad?"

"A little," Nya admitted, "but we have to trust that we're doing the right thing, and that means trusting each other."

Lloyd took a deep breath in then let it out slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Trust. We can do this."

"I shall see you as soon as I see you," Wu said, and he turned and began walking up the path into the Fire Temple.

"Be careful!" Lloyd called after him.

Wu waved a hand at him without turning around.

* * *

"As soon as we go in there, you will see Wu. Don't afraid of him, even though he killed your original parents," Lord Garmadon instructed.

"Yeah, no big deal," Kai muttered rebelliously.

Lord Garmadon sighed. "Please keep it together, Blood. We need to present a united front to Wu. We don't know where in the Fire Temple he will be, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't know about my secret back entrance which we're about to enter through, so he'll have entered through the front and I'm betting he will stay close to his exit point, that same front entrance."

"That w-was a long sentence," Jay pointed out. "Are you nervous, Dad? Don't forget to bbbreathe when you talk."

Lord Garmadon took a deep breath in then let it out slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Breathe. We can do this."

"Of course we can do this," Cole promised, shooting an interesting look at his brothers.

Lord Garmadon wondered what that was about, but he dismissed it quickly. Most likely his boys had discussed facing Wu in same way and Cole was trying to remind them of that talk.

"Here we go. Follow me, single file line, then stand beside me in that same line," Lord Garmadon instructed. He rubbed both pairs of hands together. "Let's do this."

The five of them entered the Fire Temple.

As soon as Wu saw the five of them, he fell to his knees just inside the front entrance. "Boys! What has he done to you? Garmadon! What have you done?!"

"Only showed them where their loyalties should lie. There's nothing different about my four little boys, just that they know who they belong with and who they should trust," Lord Garmadon said grandly, gesturing to the four boys lined up beside him on the cooled lava at the back of the Fire Temple.

"Oh, boys. My poor boys," Wu said, on the brink of despair.

"They are not yours! They are mine! They belong with me, they trust me, they are mine and they will never be yours again! I have remade them in my own image!" Lord Garmadon boasted.

What he didn't see, as he was too busy monologuing, was what those boys of his were doing. Cole had grabbed Kai's hand, Kai had grabbed Jay's hand, and Jay had grabbed the littlest boy's hand. They were bracing themselves, getting ready.

"Please, boys! You have to trust me!" Wu yelled across the Fire Temple desperately.

Lord Garmadon laughed at him, a deep, dark, clearly evil laugh.

At that moment, the four boys took off across the fiery field. They dodged lava spurts and raced across hardened magma, heading away from Lord Garmadon and toward Wu.

Wu gasped in unison as the little boys skidded to a stop in front of him. The four looked up, fear plain in their eyes. But no uncertainty. None.

"No!" Garmadon shouted. "What are you doing?! You're mine!"

"No! We are our own!" Cole shouted back.

"We know you lied to us! And we know the truth!" Kai yelled.

"Wwwe're going with W-wu and you can't stop us!" Jay screamed at the top of his lungs.

Ghost just shook his head at Lord Garmadon.

Lord Garmadon stomped his foot in rage. "No, you're coming with me!"

He started across the fiery field, but before he could take more than a step, lava shot up in front of him all the way up, hitting the ceiling with a loud hiss.

The whole room shook. Stalactites started falling from the ceiling and piling on the floor, building up a wall between Lord Garmadon and his former sons who stood with his former brother.

"I'll get you back! Mark my words, Wu, I'll get them back!" Lord Garmadon screamed just before the last rock came down and separated the five from him.

Wu took a deep breath in then let it out slowly. "We're okay now, boys. The Destiny's Bounty is waiting just outside. Lloyd and Nya are guarding it. We should get moving quickly and get some more Tomorrow's Tea to return your regular forms to us as you have been returned to me."

"I have no idea what you just said, but we need to talk before we go anywhere," Cole declared, pulling his headpiece down to the back of his neck. His brothers followed suit, removing their own masks.

"Yeah. We gotta tell you who we are, Mister Wu. We're supposed to be the next masters of the main four elements, although we don't have our powers yet," Kai explained, then he paused. "Nya's out there? My baby sister Nya?"

"W-we think Dad, I mean Lord Garmadon, killed our families to get us, or at least stole us from them. Wwwe don't know you, but wwwe know you're the good to Lord Garmadon's evil, so you've gotta help us," Jay said slightly hysterically.

The littlest boy nodded

"You mean you don't remember?" Wu questioned faintly.

The four boys shook their heads in unison.

Wu blinked. "Oh dear."


	13. I know we'll meet again

**AN: Welcome to the thirteenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" In this chapter: Lord Garmadon mourns, Wu tries to parent and fails, and we find out why Ghost doesn't talk. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "This Is Not Goodbye" by Sidewalk Prophets, "I know we'll meet again, so let your life begin."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Big House" by Audio Adrenaline, "I don't know if you feel love at all, but I bet you wish you had"; "Back Home" featuring Jake Owen by Owl City, "I'm headed back to tree lines, to free time and starry nights, to bonfires and fireflies, pack your bags it's time to go"; and "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye, "Told myself that you were right for me, but felt so lonely in your company, but that was love and it's an ache I still remember."**

* * *

Lord Garmadon collapsed into his throne with a thud, legs barely getting him there as they shook and arms lowering him quickly as they trembled.

The Serpentine turned at the thud and gasped in mass.

"Lord Garmadon, you've returned!" Skales exclaimed.

Snappa frowned. "Where are the boysss?

Lord Garmadon made a high-pitched whimpering sound. "I, I couldn't- I couldn't-"

"Couldn't sssave them?" Snappa gasped, clasping his hands over his chest.

"I couldn't stop them," Lord Garmadon groaned. "Wu took them. He took my boys. No, worse than that, They went with him. Willingly. They went with him. They're gone."

* * *

Wu heard the moment Nya saw the five shapes emerge from the Fire Temple. Her statements to Lloyd were more like shouts, ones that pierced Wu's heart. "Look! Wu got them! He got them back! They're fine, they're okay, they're safe!"

She was right in that last part, Wu reflected as Nya and Lloyd rushed to meet him on the path out of the Fire Temple. The boys were safe, they were now safe. Whether they were okay, fine, or even back was yet to be seen.

Lloyd and Nya pulled up short, stopping just in front of Wu and the boys.

"What, they're little?" Lloyd asked incredulously.

"I thought we were over this," Nya muttered. "What, do we just go get more Tomorrow's Tea?"

"I am afraid it's a little more complicated than that, Nya," Wu said wearily.

Before he could explain more, Kai interrupted Wu. "You're Nya? You're not my little sister. My sister's just a little kid, like, Storm or Ghost's age. Who're you?"

"Blood, don't be rude," Cole chided. He turned to Nya apologetically. "Sorry for my brother. He doesn't really like being polite. It's nice to meet you. Could I get your name again? You're Nya, right?"

"Riiiiight," Nya said slowly. She looked Wu straight in the eyes. "What's wrong with them?"

"Nothing is w-wrong w-with us wwwe're j-just a little confused. Lord Garmadon told us you wwwere the enemy and w-we're still gettin' used to seeing you as friends," Jay explained carefully.

"They don't remember us," Nya put together.

"No," Lloyd whispered. Wu could almost hear his nephew's heart break.

"It will be okay," Wu said firmly. He searched for a good story; after all, the boys probably wouldn't believe the truth. "After all, they were each very young when we met them last."

"They were?" Lloyd asked, scrunching his face up in confusion.

"Yes, when we looked in on the next elemental masters as babies to make sure they were safe. The boys wouldn't remember that, but we do, don't we?" Wu said pointedly.

Nya caught on quickly. "Of course we do. Right, Lloyd?"

"Yeah. Right," Lloyd said uncertainly.

"Let's get the boys settled on the Destiny's Bounty, that's what we call that ship of ours over there, then we can talk more," Wu surged forward.

Nya clapped her hands. "Okay, boys, let's go!"

She led the way, pulling an extremely confused Lloyd along with her and speaking to him in hushed tones. Wu ushered the boys along behind.

"You live on that ship? How? It's a ship. There's no water, you can't sail it anywhere, not that I'm not grateful that there's no water," Kai said quickly.

"It's a flying ship," Wu said simply.

Jay squealed with excitement. "A flying ship? That's so, so, so cool!"

"It's okay," Kai allowed, but he was grinning.

"Are we gonna live on the flying ship, the, uh, Destinty's 'Bouty too?" Cole asked.

"Destiny's Bounty, and yes," Wu answered.

Cole grinned. "Awesome. That's awesome."

Lloyd let down the ladder to the main deck at a nice tilt, easy for even little kids to climb. "C'mon up, uh, boys."

"I'm not good at ladders," Jay confessed, looking up at the ladder warily.

Wu was about to offer his help when Cole stepped in. Or rather, when Cole stepped forward and knelt by Storm. "It's okay, Storm. We won't leave you behind. Here, get on my back. I'll carry you up. Blood, can you get Ghost going?"

"You wanna climb or you wanna get a ride, Ghost?" Kai asked.

The blond boy considered, then held his arms up to Kai.

"Figured," Kai laughed, and he knelt for the littlest boy to get on his back.

The two duos struggled up the ladder, Wu hovering just behind them worriedly. He exchanged glances with Nya and Lloyd, trying to see what they thought of this development.

Finally, the four boys made it to the main deck, Wu right behind them.

"Follow me, kiddos. We made up a bedroom for you guys. It used to be Lloyd's, so his bed's still in there, but we'll probably move it to a spare room so you've got your own space," Nya explained, making her way to the room that had formerly been the ninjas'.

"Yeah, I can do that right away if you want me to do it," Lloyd said quickly, obviously trying to make up for his slow take to the current plan.

"All right, here we are!" Nya said cheerily, sweeping open the door.

The four boys entered, with Wu, Lloyd, and Nya following right behind them.

"This is so weird," Kai said under his breath.

"Yeah. It looks a lot like our old room. Same size, same bunk beds, same dressers, but the walls and floor and ceiling are wood instead of stone," Cole summed up.

"B-but that's cool," Jay said quickly. "It's a good room. All wwwe gotta do to make it even b-better is get some toys in here."

"We can get some toys," Wu said kindly. "Jay, what kind of toys would you like?"

The redheaded boy stared at him in confusion.

"Jay? You okay?" Lloyd asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Jay said slowly. "I just haven't heard that name in a long time."

"What have you been called in the meantime?" Wu asked, having a guess based on what he'd heard the boys say but not certain enough to say it.

"Wwwell, Lord Garmadon gave us all new names. I was Storm," Jay explained. "Actually, at first I w-was Blood, bbbut I complained, so I've b-been Storm ever since."

"Is Kai Blood then?" Wu asked, looking at the brunet boy.

"Yup," Kai stated. "Blood, that's me. It sounds cool, but it's actually kind of a villain name, so I don't know how to feel about it. Maybe call me Blood for now and I can slowly get used to being called Kai again once I get comfortable here, maybe?"

"Okay, we can do that, Blood," Wu said amiably, turning back to the redhead. "Jay or Storm, which would you prefer?"

"Storm for a wwwhile, p-prob'ly," Jay allowed. "I got outta the habit of b-being Jay."

"Cole, what was your name, and what do you want to go by?" Wu asked, turning to the tallest of the four little boys.

"I was Midnight. I'm almost ready to be Cole again, but not quite," Cole admitted. "Is that okay?"

"It is more than okay. Whatever we can do to make you happy here, we'll do it," Wu promised.

Kai perked up and said quickly, so fast that the words almost slurred together, "Can I get a racecar?"

"Whatever we can do to make you happy here that is reasonable and within our means, we'll do it," Wu corrected.

Kai slumped. "Oh. Yeah, that makes sense."

"So, what about you, Zane?" Wu asked. "What would you like to be called, your name or something else?"

He was met with a confused stare.

"Who's Zane?" Three little voices, Cole's, Kai's, and Jay's, asked in unison.

"Why, this little guy, of course," Nya chirped, pointing at the small blond.

"You mean you didn't know his name?" Lloyd asked.

"We've just been calling him by his nickname, Ghost," Cole admitted.

"You didn't think to ask his real name?" Lloyd questioned.

Kai puffed up indignantly. "We did! He doesn't talk, can't you tell? And even if he did, I don't think he knows his name."

"Really," Wu said slowly.

Zane-slash-Ghost looked ashamed of himself.

"That's perfectly fine. Nothing's wrong, it's just interesting," Wu said more quickly.

Zane-slash-Ghost looked relieved.

"So, kiddo, what do you want to go by?" Nya asked, getting them back on topic. "Shake your head if you want to be Ghost, nod your head if you want to be Zane, shake your head then nod your head if you want to do what your brothers are doing and start out as your nickname before going back to your real name."

Zane-slash-Ghost just shrugged.

"Guess we'll go with the 'Ghost then Zane' plan then," Lloyd commented.

"Sounds good to me," Nya agreed.

"All right. Midnight, Blood, Storm, Ghost, can you entertain yourselves in here for a few minutes while I discuss our next steps with Lloyd and Nya?" Wu asked.

"Yeah, we're good at entertaining ourselves," Cole asserted.

"W-we've come up wwwith all kinds of games for the four of us to p-play," Jay explained happily.

"Sounds good, then. We will return shortly," Wu promised.

"See you in a few!" Cole, Kai, and Jay chorused.

Wu paused. It felt like he was supposed to reply to that in a specific way, but he didn't know how or what to say.

"Now you say 'see you in a few' back," Kai explained self-importantly.

"See you in a few, then," Wu said warmly. He turned and exited the room, listening to Nya and Lloyd's footsteps behind him. He led them to the bridge and shut the door behind them.

"They're kids and they don't remember anything and we can't tell them anything for now because we've got to keep them calm and safe!" Lloyd said immediately.

"That's not entirely true. They remember things up to the ages that they are right now," Nya pointed out.

"Yeah, but that's not a big help to us, now is it," Lloyd snapped.

"Lloyd, chill. This is bad, but we can get through it. They've trusted us. We can't let our boys down," Nya said simply.

Lloyd threw his hands up in the air. "UGH!"

"Do you need a minute?" Nya asked him. "You're acting more hot-tempered than Kai."

"No, I'm okay. I'm good," Lloyd stated. He took a few deep breaths. "Yeah, I'm good."

"Okay, because we're going to need all of us to figure this out," Nya said.

"I believe our course of action should be similar to last time Cole, Kai, Jay, and Zane were turned into children. Seek out Tomorrow's Tea," Wu summed up.

"Yeah, but what about their memories of recent years? Will those come back with the years coming back?" Lloyd asked.

"We can only hope, and ask Mistaké about it of course," Wu stated.

"And what about Zane, I mean Ghost? Why doesn't he remember back to when he was this age? Kai said, that is, Blood said that Ghost didn't even remember his own name. And why can't he speak?" Lloyd said worriedly.

Wu thought about that for a long moment. He could see Nya and Lloyd thinking about it too.

"Of course!" Nya exclaimed after a too-long-for-Wu's-comfort pause.

"What, what?" Lloyd demanded.

"Za- Ghost can't remember when he was this little because he was never this little," Nya explained. "He's a nindroid!"

"Oooooh, and so he doesn't know how to speak just yet, but he's probably figuring it out," Lloyd breathed. "Nya, you're a genius."

"Thank you, thank you very much," Nya beamed.

"So if the others' memories return upon becoming their correct ages, Ghost's memories and voice should return as well. Therefore, we must go to Mistaké," Wu figured.

Lloyd shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

"Shall we go back to the boys?" Nya suggested, then she paused. "What will we tell them?"

"We shall say that we're getting a tea to make sure that they're okay, that Lord Garmadon didn't do anything to them that would allow him to track them down," Wu declared after he thought for a little while.

Nya nodded. "That should work."

"Should," Lloyd muttered as he followed Wu and Nya back to the bedroom of the boys. "Should is just so reassuring."


	14. Will you still love me

**AN: Welcome to the fourteenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Time to watch this thing pass the Bechdel test (no easy feat, when there is exactly one main female character at the time of which you're writing the fanfiction). The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Young and Beautiful" by Lana Del Rey, "Will you still love me when I've got nothing but my aching soul." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Breathe Me" by Sia, "I am small and needy" and "I Live Alone" by Owl City, "And I felt young again when I saw what we could've been in all of those years."**

* * *

Luckily, the boys accepted Wu's story about what the tea they were doing after was supposed to do. Unluckily, they had lots of questions.

"So like, a tracking device or something? That's like something out of a spy movie. I'd love it if it wasn't being used against us," Kai marveled.

"When and how would Lord Garmadon have gotten us tracked up with something?" Cole asked, frowning. "I don't like the sound of being tracked, and I really don't like the sound that being done by Lord Garmadon to us."

"How w-will some tea figure out if Lord Garmadon did something? W-what's in the tea? I bet it's gonna taste nasty," Jay said doubtfully.

In that moment, Lloyd was kind of glad that Zane (or rather, Ghost) wasn't speaking currently. It made for one less set of questions he, his uncle, and Nya had to answer.

"Yeah, a tracking device, or something like it," Nya answered.

"I don't quite know how Garmadon would have gotten tracking devices onto you boys, but I suspect he would have done it as soon as he got a hold of you," Wu said simply.

"Oooh, so like right before we woke up in our room alone with those sheets on," Cole put together.

"I have no idea what you're saying, but yes," Sensei Wu affirmed.

"And as for what's in the tea and how it's going to taste, I don't know, but we can only hope for the best," Lloyd told Jay.

Jay shrugged, looking only half-satisfied.

"It can't be any grosser than Lord Garmadon's 'condensed good' and grubs," Kai figured. He shuddered and stuck out his tongue. "I snuck some of that one time and I've regretted it ever since. So nasty."

"Your face was hilarious though, so I'd say it was worth it," Cole teased mercilessly.

"Wwwas it 'good', though? I'm guessin' it w-w-was actually 'condensed evil,'" Jay guessed.

Wu began to speak (presumably to cut off the boys from starting to argue, Lloyd figured). "We'll fly the Destiny's Bounty over to the tea shop. Will you boys be okay amusing yourselves in this room, and only in this room, while we speak with the owner and try to obtain the tea we need?"

"Uh-huh," Kai said quickly, nodding his head. "We'll be good."

"I'll be good, you'll p-probably b-break something an' bbblame it on me," Jay said petulantly.

"Whaaaaat? Like I've ever done that before," Kai joked, the grin on his face revealing the truth.

"I'll make sure they behave," Cole cut in. "But can I ask something?"

"Of course," Sensei Wu said warmly.

"Why are you okay leaving us alone? You just did it, and you're about to do it again. I mean, I know we can take care of each other, and we don't need a babysitter-" Cole began.

"No babysitters!" Kai crowed.

"No babysitters!" Jay echoed.

Zane nodded his head emphatically.

"-We don't need a babysitter, but Lord Garmadon always made one of the Serpentine watch us if he wasn't there. Why's it different here?" Cole wondered.

"For one thing, we're not going very far. For another thing, we know you're in a safe place, as very few people will go on the Destiny's Bounty and there's almost nothing in here that can hurt you without you trying to do so. For one more thing, there are four of you and you can watch out for each other. But the most important thing is that we trust you to be on your own for a little while," Sensei Wu stated.

Each of the four boys' eyes went wide.

"Whoa," Kai breathed reverently. "That's a lotta trust."

"Okay. Hey, can we get a few games or something in here before you go? And maybe get that extra bed outta here?" Cole asked.

"Of course," Wu allowed. "Lloyd, if you would go get some of your old things? Nya and I can move the bed."

"I'm on it, Sensei," Lloyd declared. He turned on his heel and exited the room, Thinking carefully, he began to mutter to himself almost without realizing it. "Now, where did I put everything? In one of the closets, sure, but in which one? This one?"

The door he opened turned out to lead directly to a bunch of cleaning supplies that didn't look like they'd been used any time recently, except for the rare broom and dustpan.

"Not that one," Lloyd realized, and he shut the door.

The next closet yielded similar results, just much more recently used, and the third closet was filled with assorted weapons and training supplies, while the fourth was yet more cleaning supplies in a state of disuse.

"Who knew we had so many cleaning supplies?" Lloyd muttered to himself, feeling slightly discouraged at his inability to track down the things that had once, not so long ago, been so important to him and still secretly were to a certain extent.

The fifth closet turned out to be the final one he checked, however, as it was filled with the things Lloyd considered behind him as he left his childish ways also behind.

"Jackpot." Lloyd breathed, and he filled his arms with boxes.

Heading back to the boys' room, he met Nya and Wu just outside the door.

"We put your bed, as well as some 'extra' clothes and things, into that room," Nya explained, gesturing over her shoulder.

Lloyd took the "extra" to mean "things that would have revealed to the boys their old lives" and nodded. "Got it. Guess I'll be sleeping in a new room for a little while."

"Sorry about that, we really wanted the boys to feel at home here," Nya apologized.

"No, no, I'm all behind it," Lloyd said, waving away her words metaphorically, if not literally, as his arms were still full of boxes. "Wanna help me show these off to them?"

"You got it," Nya agreed amiably.

"You two get on that, I will set a course for Mistaké's tea shop and get us on our way," Wu allowed.

Lloyd entered the boys' new-old room with Nya right behind him to the sight of four young boys sitting in a circle playing some kind of old hand game.

"That looks fun, but wouldn't you rather play with some of these toys?" Lloyd commented, brandishing a box in the circle's direction.

"New toys!" Jay cheered, hopping up instantly and running over to Lloyd's side. "W-what'dja get us, wwwhat did you get us?"

"I got the standards: some building materials, some play swords, some cars, some action figures, some comic books, and some assorted other things," Lloyd said proudly, eager to see what his old-new friends would think of his new-old toys.

"Gimme the action figures now!" Jay said immediately, bouncing up and down.

"Be polite, Storm," Cole chided, coming to stand by his middle younger brother.

"Gimme the action figures now, please!" Jay rephrased.

Lloyd laughed and shuffled the boxes. "Here you go, kid. What do you want, uh, Midnight?"

"I'd like the play swords, if you don't mind," Cole said nicely.

"Don't mind if you do," Lloyd reassured, handing the box holding several play swords over to the polite young boy.

Cole ripped it open, yanked out two swords, and quickly shrieked, lobbing one at his immediate younger brother, "Blood, think fast!"

Kai caught the sword narrowly, almost letting it hit Zane over the head but grabbing it just in time. "Oh yeah, it's on, Midnight!"

Nya walked over to Zane and knelt by him. "What do you want, Ghost?"

The tiny boy just shrugged, looking at his hands.

Lloyd joined them, setting all the remaining boxes down. "Do you want to look through them together?"

Zane shrugged again.

"Oh, I think I get it," Lloyd realized slowly. "You're out of your element."

Nya and Zane looked at him strangely.

"Not out of your element, as in, out of your element of ice, but out of your element, as in, you're out of the place where you felt comfortable and now you don't know what to do," Lloyd rephrased. "And you know what, I get it. I felt the same way when I first came here. I didn't know what to do with myself. But Wu, Nya- and some, uh, others, made me feel at home. I hope we can do the same for you."

Zane looked up and smiled slightly.

"That's more like it," Lloyd praised. At the ends of his abilities (that was the most motivational speech he had ever given), he thrust the box holding the assorted other things at Zane. "Why don't you see if there's something in there you like?"

Zane took the box and promptly dumped it end over end, beginning to search through the contents carefully. After a few minutes of Lloyd and Nya waiting, the two occasionally ducking as Kai and Cole passed them by with their play swords flashing wildly, Zane pulled a pack of crayons and a notepad out of the mess and looked up at Lloyd for confirmation.

"Looking good," Lloyd approved. He reached out and ruffled the boy's hair a little.

"I think we should be nearing the tea shop, so we're going to get going now. Are you going to be okay?" Nya checked.

Zane flashed her a genuine grin.

Nya stood and offered her hand to Lloyd, who accepted it to pull himself up. They headed to the bridge side-by-side down the halls.

"Do you think this will work?" Lloyd said after a long moment of silence.

"Like you said, we can only hope for the best, and prepare for the worst," Nya said thoughtfully.

"Don't think I said that last part," Lloyd said much more lightly than he was feeling.

"I came up with it, thought it sounded good," Nya said nonchalantly.

"I've gotta admit, it does sound good," Lloyd confirmed.

Nya laughed. "I know. I'm awesome that way."

Lloyd shoved her gently with one shoulder. She shoved him right back, then she dashed ahead into the bridge so that he couldn't shove her again.

Lloyd entered to see his uncle standing at the wheel, gently piloting the Destiny's Bounty down into landing position on the crowded street.

"Are the boys situated?" Wu inquired, not taking his eyes off the window that allowed him to see what he was doing.

"All set, even Ghost, thanks to some smooth talking by this guy," Nya mentioned, patting Lloyd on the shoulder playfully as he came to stand beside her.

"Well done, nephew," Wu praised, settling the ship and turning away from the wheel.

"It was nothing, really," Lloyd said, somewhat uncomfortable with the situation.

"It isn't nothing. This may show your budding leadership skills, which we can utilize to their full extent now that you have grown older," Wu summarized.

"Can we not talk about this right now? I just want to go in, get the tea, get out, and get our guys back to normal," Lloyd pleaded.

Wu nodded. "All right. But we will be talking about this."

"Fine, let's just go!" Lloyd exclaimed.

The trio exited the Destiny's Bounty's bridge, then the Destiny's Bounty itself. They stood in front of the tea shop nervously, or at least, Lloyd did so nervously. He was sure Nya and Sensei Wu were much more calm, or at least, they seemed to be.

"Let me handle the talking as much as possible. Mistaké requires some delicate handling," Wu sighed.

"Fine by me, just do it fast," Lloyd suggested.

They entered the tea shop to the sound of shouting.

"You brewed the white tea, then you brewed pu-erh tea, and you mixed them together?" Mistaké was shrieking at a young woman in front of the counter.

"I'm sorry, I just liked the way each of them tasted and thought they'd be good together," the young woman said desperately.

"Out! Out of my shop! I never want to see you in here again!" Mistaké rasped.

Nearly in tears, the young woman stumbled out past Nya, Wu, and Lloyd.

Right before the door slammed, Mistaké yelled after the girl, "Granddaughter, tell your mother that we're off for next week's mother-daughter tea because of your stupidity!"

"Hello, Mistaké," Wu said cautiously, stepping up to the counter.

"Oh, it's you," Mistaké sneered. "What do you want this time?"

"We would like some more Tomorrow's Tea, please," Wu requested.

"More Tomorrow's Tea," Mistaké repeated.

"If you wouldn't mind," Wu added.

"More Tomorrow's Tea?" Mistaké shrieked.

"Oh dear," Wu sighed.

"You want more Tomorrow's Tea?" Mistaké repeated indignantly, or in what passed for an indignant tone in her creaky voice. "More of one of my most precious commodities? What, did you brew it wrong the first time?"

Wu looked supremely offended, and Lloyd stifled a laugh.

"I did not brew it wrong," Wu said stiffly. "We simply require more of it."

"Lucky for you, I just got a new shipment in. I'll give you a little more, but only on one condition," Mistaké relented.

"Name it," Lloyd butted in, more than eager to get the tea, get to the Destiny's Bounty, and get his friends back to normal.

"You three tell me everything that happened, last time and this time," Mistaké ordered.

Wu sighed deeply. "Fine."

"Here's what happened," Nya began. "The first time, Lord Garmadon, the evil man we've been fighting, accidentally turned the four ninja into kids. Luckily for us, the ninjas remembered everything. Unluckily for us, Lord Garmadon also turned a Grundle skeleton into a real Grundle. The ninja fought off the Grundle and we turned them back to normal, but not without turning Lloyd older, which you may have noticed. This time, Lord Garmadon turned the ninjas into kids without memories beyond their new ages and tried to turn them into, I don't know, his loving princes of evil or something? We just got them back, but now we want their real selves back."

"That sounds rough," Mistaké sighed.

"It's been hard," Nya admitted.

"So will you give us the Tomorrow's Tea now?" Lloyd asked, pushing back to the original subject. He wanted his friends back to normal and he wanted them back to normal now.

Mistaké smiled. "No."

"What?!" Lloyd protested. In that moment, he saw his visions of getting his friends back go up in smoke, or, perhaps more aptly, in tea steam.

"I said no, or rather, I should've said, not just the Tomorrow's Tea," Mistaké added.

"Then why didn't you just say that?" Lloyd said in exasperation.

"An old lady's gotta have a little fun. You see, Tomorrow's Tea turns you older, but it does not affect your memory. If you gave it to your boys now, you'd have four children in too-large bodies, stumbling around in confusion," Mistaké explained.

"Sounds familiar," Lloyd said wryly.

"You must use the Tea of Restoration in addition to the Tomorrow's Tea. Brew them separately, stir them together, and pour them into four equal portions. As the mixture will contain the Tea of Restoration, it absolutely must be drunk, not poured on them, not smelled by them, not brewed in front of them, drunk," Mistaké continued.

"Not a problem," Wu promised. "May we get the teas now?"

"Nope," Mistaké said simply.

Lloyd felt like he was about to explode. He forced himself to take a deep breath before asking as calmly as he could manage, "And why not?"

"I don't have the Tea of Restoration. It's even more precious than the Tomorrow's Tea. I'll have to order it specially," Mistaké explained.

"And how long will that take?" Lloyd managed to ask.

"Hard to say. A little while," Mistaké said carelessly. "If you leave the number for the monstrosity of a ship you've got out there, I'll call you when it arrives."

"That would be much appreciated," Wu stated. He bowed to the tea shop owner, then exited.

"Thank you for your help," Nya said warmly, then followed the sensei out.

Lloyd didn't say anything. He couldn't; his throat was too blocked up with stress and fright. He managed a nod to Mistaké and left the tea shop.

"So what do we do now? The boys are going to be staying with us for a while, I guess," Nya commented. "And I don't know about you two, but I don't feel comfortable keeping them from the truth and their families. It feels too much like what Garmadon did."

"But we can't tell them everything, because they probably won't be able to handle it, and we can't just give them back to their families, because their families probably won't be able to handle it and also because only two of them have families outside of us," Lloyd argued.

Wu held up a hand before Nya could issue a retort. "I know what we must do."


	15. We're taking it all back

**AN: Welcome to the fifteenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" I have so many emotions about this chapter, you have no idea. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Feel the Light" by Jennifer Lopez, "Remember what we forgot, I know it's a long shot, but we're taking it all back." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell and The Guardians of the Galaxy, "If you need me call me, no matter where you are, no matter how far" and "Family" by TobyMac, "Are we too far apart? Two worlds among the stars, you're gonna take a piece of my heart if you leave."**

* * *

Kai didn't mean to break the toy sword. He had promised to be good until Mister Wu, the not-Kai's-sister Miss Nya, and Mister whatever-the-blond-guy's-name-was-again got back. And he had meant to keep that promise, really, he had. But when Cole kept getting hits on him and Kai couldn't get him back, after three times in a row, Kai was bound to get a little mad. And sometimes, when Kai got mad, or sad, or any emotion, really, he did stupid stuff.

So he smacked the toy sword against the bedpost, and the wood cracked and split (the wood of the toy sword, Kai meant, not the bedpost; that was okay).

"Ooo, Blood's gonna get in trouble!" Cole sing-songed at him gleefully.

"Nuh-uh, it was your fault anyway," Kai said petulantly.

"How w-was that Midnight's fault? All he wwwas doing w-was p-playing with you," Jay butted in, looking up from making one of his action figures fly around like a bird or a superhero.

"Yeah, playing with me, toying with me, not letting me get a hit even when he already hit me like fifty times," Kai argued angrily, chucking the pieces of the toy sword away from him.

"It's not my fault if you're a bad swordfighter, and it's even less my fault if I'm so good I hit you a buncha times before you got me once, especially since it was only like five times instead of fifty," Cole argued back.

"Guys, stop fighting. 'M-member wwwhat happened when D- Lord Garmadon came b-back from commanding the Serpentine and saw all four of us arguing instead of training and B-bytar just standing there w-watching us?" Jay asked, setting down his action figure and stepping in between his two older brothers.

Cole, Kai, Jay, and even Ghost shuddered.

"We trained so hard and so long that we had to take baths even though it wasn't bath day because we were so sweaty and stinky," Cole complained, wrinkling up his face.

"So let's not argue, just in case Mister Wu does somethin' similar," Kai agreed with Jay.

Cole eyed him warily. "So you're gonna own up and be a big boy, taking responsibility for your actions and everything?"

"Yeah, I'll tell Mister Wu I broke that guy's stupid sword," Kai sighed, then he paused. "What was that guy's name again?"

"Mmmichaels," Jay said decisively.

"I don't think his name was Michaels, Storm," Cole corrected. "I think it began with a 'luh' sound. Luh-something was his name."

"Bbbut he looked like a M-michaels," Jay muttered.

A knock on the door startled them.

"Who's gonna answer it?" Kai wondered.

"W-what if it isn't Mmmister W-wu and those other two? W-what then?" Jay wondered.

"Then we fight and kick the intruders off the Destiny's Bounty and keep Mister Wu's ship safe for him," Cole said decisively. He got into a fighting position.

Jay and Kai copied him.

Ghost simply stood up, walked to the door, and opened it. He gave a little wave to the trio standing just outside the doorway.

"Hi, Ghost," Nya said kindly. "May we come in?"

Ghost shrugged, but he stepped out of the way and let the three of them come in.

"So, boys, we have good news and bad news, and some more good news and some news in between. What would you like to hear first, second, third, and fourth?" Wu asked, jumping in without a pause.

"Good, bad, more good, then in between, like you said it," Cole decided.

"Sounds okay to me," Jay agreed.

Kai shrugged. "Whatever."

Ghost nodded and pointed at Cole to show that he agreed with the oldest of his brothers.

"The good news is that we don't think Lord Garmadon put any kind of tracker on any of you, and if he did we won't do anything about it, because we're not scared of him, so you don't have to drink the gross tea," the blond guy said cheerfully, even though he kinda looked like he had been crying, like, crying a lot.

"The bad news is we can't give you back to your families right away, just in case Lord Garmadon comes after you," Nya said smoothly.

"But our families are still around?" Cole gasped, catching on immediately.

Jay looked like he was gonna cry as much as the blond guy probably just had. "My m-mom and dad are okay? Our families are okay?"

"For the most part, yes," Wu said warmly.

That started the waterworks from Jay.

Kai blinked back tears, determined not to bawl like a baby (or like Jay or the blond guy). "You said not right away, but maybe later? Later we can go back?"

"That's the good news. I do not know when you will be able to return to your families, as we don't want to make them into targets, but they can come see you. I already called them before we came into this room, and those who can come are already on their way," Wu stated.

Jay shrieked with glee and hugged Ghost, then Cole, then Kai quickly. "Wwwe're gonna see our families! Wwwe're gonna see them! They're okay and w-we get to see them!"

"Yeah, yeah, we all heard Mister Wu say it, Storm, you can relax now," Cole teased, but his voice was choked up like he was gonna cry too.

"So what's the in between news?" Kai pestered.

Wu sighed and rubbed his face with one hand. "That's the hard part to talk about."

"So say the easiest part of the hard part and go from there," Cole said simply.

"If only it were that simple," Wu sighed.

"Here's the deal," Nya picked up the conversation. "We can't tell you everything that's happened, everything that's going on, even everything that's going to happen. Things are going to get weird. Things may get a little scary. But we need you to trust us and trust that we have the best in mind for you."

The four boys looked at each other, then at the trio skeptically.

"That sounds kinda like something Lord Garmadon w-would say," Jay noted worriedly.

"It's okay. You don't have to make your decision just yet. Your families are probably almost here, so you can see them first, then decide," Wu said.

"That sounds good to me," Cole allowed.

"We should probably actually introduce ourselves before you go see them, though," the blond guy said. "I'm Lloyd. This is my uncle, Sensei Wu, and that's Nya."

"Nya my sister is going to be here soon. We should give you a nickname, Miss Nya, so it doesn't get confusing," Kai commented. "Or is saying 'Miss Nya' enough of a difference?"

Nya traded a look with Wu and Lloyd. She sighed and knelt in front of Kai. "Here's the thing, Kai. Your sister Nya isn't coming."

"She's not? Did my mom and dad leave her with the babysitter? They shouldn't have, she hates that," Kai stated.

"Actually, Blood, your sister's already here," Nya said quietly.

Kai felt his eyes go wide. "She is? Why haven't you let me see her?"

Nya smiled, a little sadly, Kai felt. "This is where it gets weird, Blood. You've already seen her. In fact, you're looking at her."

Kai gaped at her. "...Nya?"

"Kai," Nya replied, putting emphasis on his real name.

"Nya," Kai gasped, putting the pieces together of why she looked so familiar..

"Kai. Are we going to just keep saying each other's names back and forth, or do you want to hug your little sister?" Nya teased.

Kai jumped forward, wrapping his arms around Nya. It didn't make any sense to him, but he didn't care. His sister was there, and he was holding her.

"Hey, bro. I've missed you," Nya said into Kai's hair.

"I've missed you too!" Kai gasped, his voice nearly a whine. Normally he would care about appearances in front of his brothers and especially in front of strangers like Mister Wu and Mister Lloyd, but he didn't care in that moment.

"I'm so glad you're safe, I was super worried. I didn't know where you were, but I thought you were with Lord Garmadon, and that was almost scarier than thinking about you out in the world on your own," Nya confessed, her voice wobbling but not choked by tears.

"I thought you were dead," Kai hiccuped, his voice definitely choked by tears that were falling on his sister's shoulder. "I thought you and Mom and Dad were dead, and I was never gonna see you agai-ai-ain."

"Shhh. It's okay. You're here, and I'm here, and Midnight and Storm and Ghost and Wu and Lloyd are all here. We're all here, and we're okay," Nya soothed, rocking back and forth a little.

Kai pushed back from her a little and squinted up at her (and how weird was that, looking up to find his little sister's face). "You didn't mention Mom or Dad."

Nya's face changed, emotions flying across it. "They're- they're no longer around, Kai,"

"Oh." Kai had to think about that for a moment, struggling with his feelings. "But I have you guys."

"Of course you have us," Nya agreed easily.

Kai pulled all the way back from his sister, scrubbing at his eyes. "So, uh, why are you so big?"

"Why are you so little?" Nya teased, ruffling his hair.

"No, that doesn't answer my question," Kai said with a mock scowl.

Nya sighed. "That's going to have to be one of those things that we don't explain to you and you have to trust me to hold for you."

Kai wrinkled up his face for a long moment. "...Fine."

That decided, he snuggled back into his little big sister's arms, this time facing out at his brothers, daring them to say something dismissive. They didn't. In fact, they almost looked jealous.

"So you're B-blood's sister?" Jay butted in.

"You're the Nya he talked about all the time at first," Cole stated.

"Yes and I suppose yes," Nya said warmly.

"Cool," Cole commented. "We're his brothers, in case you didn't know."

"I did, in fact, know that, but I didn't know you knew it," Nya stated, looking very happy at that new information.

"Hello? Is anyone home?" A musical-sounding voice called through the doorway. "I got up the ladder relatively fine, but I'm not walking any further than I need to until I know where I'm going, what with my bad leg and all."

Cole stood stock-still. He whispered, "Dad?"

"I do believe so," Wu said merrily.

"Dad!" Cole yelled. "Dad, we're in here! Dad! Dad!"

"Cole? Is that you?" The same voice asked, sounding much closer.

"Yes! Yes yes yes! Dad!" Cole called out, beginning to cry as he spoke.

Kai craned his neck and saw a man appear in the doorway. The man had dark gray hair, an even darker mustache, wrinkles around his eyes, a tuxedo, and big eyebrows that looked a lot like Cole's eyebrows, Kai noticed. But Kai barely had time to notice all that, because Cole flung himself at the man as soon as they saw each other.

"Daddy!" Cole sobbed, sounding a lot younger than he looked.

"Boy, you haven't called me that in a while. It's been a hard time, huh, buddy?" The man stated, wrapping his arms around Kai's older brother.

"Uh-huh. Worse than when I failed the Triple Tiger Sashay, worse than that," Cole said, his voice muffled because his face was buried in the man's torso.

"My my, worse than the Triple Tiger Sashay. Want to sing about it?" The man asked.

"No," Cole groaned, which was a reasonable response to a really weird question, Kai figured.

"Want to do an interpretive dance about it?" The man asked.

Cole giggled, a little wetly, which was a less reasonable response but still a good one. "Nope."

"Fine, fine. Want to talk about it?" The man rephrased.

"Yes!" Cole agreed. He backed away from the man a little and grabbed him by the hand, pulling him to one of the beds and sitting with him there.

Cole began speaking wildly, but Kai barely heard him, because at that moment two voices called into the room, "Yoo-hoo! We're here!"

"Mmmy ppparents!" Jay shrieked. He ran to the door, yelling, "In here! In here!"

The next youngest of Kai's brothers stood there, bouncing up and down excitedly for only a moment before two people appeared before him.

They reached out and wrapped Jay in a huge hug, giving Kai time to examine them. They were a man and a woman, both on the old side. The woman had brown hair up in a bun, a fluffy-looking brown jacket, red glasses, and a big thing of keys on her belt. The man had gray-white hair combed back, matching eyebrows and a goatee, a blue shirt, and overalls covered in yucky-looking brown splotches. Both of them were crying a little, which matched Jay, because he was still crying. Kai could just barely hear them over the sound of Cole's near-frantic explanation.

"Heya, son," the man cooed, pulling back from the hug and kneeling down to Jay's level. "How're ya doin'?"

"B-b-b-b-b-better now that you're here," Jay stuttered, his words obviously getting harder, probably with emotion, Kai decided..

"Aw, listen to you. You're getting better at your pronunciation every day," the woman cheered, joining the man in kneeling on the ground.

Jay brightened up. "You think so? Really?"

"Definitely. You took that 'r' like a champ, didn't falter at all, and you struggled on the 'b' but you got through it," the woman praised. "Didn't he do great, Ed?"

"Oh, he sure did, Edna, he sure did," the man agreed. "Make a note that we've got to celebrate that sometime soon."

"Already on it, Ed," the woman said cheerily.

Jay's giggle rang out clear and happy. "C'mon, I'll show you the cool toys w-we got here. M-mister Lloyd has the b-best stuff!"

"Mister Lloyd, huh?" The man (Ed?) said, eyeing the blond guy Jay had just mentioned. "My my my, he looks-"

"He looks different from the last time we saw him," the woman (Edna?) butted in quickly. "But that's fine, Ed, that's just fine. People change all the time."

"Yeah, rhat's for sure," Ed said agreeably. "Why don't you go ahead and show us the toys now, Jay?"

"Oh yes, we'd love to see 'em," Edna cooed.

Each of Jay's real parents took one of his hands, centering him between them. Jay tugged them along gently toward the center of the room, where he had been playing with the action figures while waiting for Mister Wu, Mister Lloyd, and Nya.

"So now I've got Nya, Midnight's got his dad, and Storm's got his mom and his dad. So all we gotta do is wait for your parent or parents," Kai said cheerfully to Ghost.

The littlest boy looked concerned, not happy like he should look.

"Do you know who they are, Ghost? I know you don't know much about yourself, but you've gotta remember who your parents are at least," Kai reasoned.

Ghost shook his head slowly.

"Huh. Oh! Wait! I know!" Kai exclaimed. He turned around in Nya's arms and looked up at her. "Mister Wu called all of our families here, right? So he knows who Ghost's parents are and can introduce them to him when they get here! Problem solved!"

Now it was Nya's turn to look concerned. She glanced over her shoulder at Wu and Lloyd.

The two men looked back at her, also looking concerned.

After a long moment, Wu stepped forward. Slowly, he came to Ghost's side and knelt next to the little boy. "Ghost, I have something to tell you. I wish I could say your family is coming to see you, I really do. But I am afraid that is not the case."

Ghost looked as sad as Kai had ever seen him, no, more sad than Kai had ever seen him.

"Did they not want to see him?" Kai asked timidly. "Is, is that why he doesn't remember them? Did they not want him?"

Around him, the room went quiet. Kai took a glance around. Cole was leaning against his dad, staring intently at Ghost and Mister Wu. Jay was seated in his mom's lap holding one of his dad's hands, also staring at Ghost and Mister Wu. All three parents were staring too. Lloyd looked sad and almost scared. Nya was pressing her lips together very tightly.

"Ghost, that's not the case. You were wanted, in fact, you were wanted very, very much, and if your father could have been here, I'm sure he would have been here. But your father passed away. I'm sorry," Wu said gently.

Ghost's face crumpled. He sat down hard, staring at the floor.

Cole, Jay, and Kai each broke out of their families' individual holds and rushed to their littlest brother's side.

"Ghost, don't cry, p-please don't cry!" Jay exclaimed, sitting beside him.

"Your dad loved you a lot, I bet," Cole reassured, sitting on Ghost's other side.

Kai sat in front of Ghost and thought for a moment, before leaning forward and grabbing Ghost's head, tilting it up so the small boy had to look at him. "Ghost, it's okay. Your dad isn't here anymore. That stinks, that stinks a lot. But you know what? You've got your brothers. You've got us. And you've got Nya, and you've got Mister Lloyd and you've got Mister Wu, and I'll bet if you wanted you could even get Midnight and Storm's parents on board with you. But you've got us, and that's what matters. You've got us."

Ghost considered that for a moment, then promptly burst into tears.

"Did I say something wrong?" Kai asked the room at large.

"No, I think you said something right," Nya assured.

Ghost held out his arms and Kai gratefully accepted them.

"Group hug!" Jay said gleefully, and he flung his arms around Kai and Ghost. "C'mon, Midnight, hug it out!"

Cole laughed a little, but he followed Jay's instructions and wrapped his arms around his three younger brothers.

And so the four boys hugged it out, surrounded by their family and their family of each other.


	16. She killed it with kisses

**AN: Welcome to the sixteenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Rotating point-of-views are awesome, and this time it's Nya's turn. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Dog Days Are Over" by Florence + The Machine, "She hid around corners and she hid under beds, she killed it with kisses and from it she fled."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Best Day" by Taylor Swift, "I didn't know if you knew, so I'm taking this chance to say" and "Fireflies" by Owl City, "It's hard to say I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep, because my dreams are bursting at the seams."**

* * *

"We've got big plans for tomorrow, so let's have supper and get to bed," Wu declared as soon as they had waved good-bye to Ed, Edna, and Lou from the deck and the three parents had disappeared past the horizon.

"We've got big plans? What big plans?" Lloyd asked, wrinkling his face in confusion.

Nya didn't know what the big plans were either, but she knew better than to express confusion in front of little kids who would easily feed on that confusion and become scared and upset. She also knew that Sensei Wu liked to make things up and expect his students to just follow along as soon as they could. So she elbowed Lloyd gently and got him looking at her. "Yeah, of course we do!"

Lloyd shrugged. "Sure, okay. Whose turn is it to do supper?"

"Mine, I do believe," Wu stated. He turned and began walking to the kitchen, quickly leaving Lloyd and Nya alone with the four young boys.

"All right, how long has it been since you four had a bath?" Nya asked, eyeing the slightly dirty little faces in front of her.

"Not too long," Jay said immediately.

Nya raised an eyebrow.

"Probably too long," Cole admitted.

"M-midnight!" Jay whined, giving him a shove. "Wwwe coulda gotten away w-with not taking a b-bath tonight and you ruined it!"

"Okay, so tonight's bath night. We can probably get a couple of baths in before supper. Have you been bathing in pairs or separately?" Nya asked.

"Separately. Who bathes together?" Cole questioned, wrinkling his eyebrows.

"Nya and me did when we were littler," Kai put forward.

Cole shrugged. "I stand corrected."

"So we can get two of you bathed before supper. Who wants to go first?" Nya asked.

No one moved.

Nya laughed a little. "Do I have to pick, or is someone going to volunteer?"

Jay grabbed Zane's hand and thrust it into the air. "Ghost wwwill!"

"All right, Ghost's going first," Nya stated.

Zane looked incredibly betrayed.

"And Storm's going second for volunteering his brother instead of himself," Nya said merrily.

Jay looked almost as betrayed.

"Don't be like that. It makes this easier, we'll just go in reverse age order," Nya reassured.

Jay looked slightly less betrayed.

"Lloyd, would you mind taking Ghost into the bathroom and getting him set up, and then staying in there just in case?" Nya asked.

"Sure thing. C'mon, Ghost, let's get clean," Lloyd said agreeably. He led Ghost below deck in the direction of the biggest bathroom.

"What are we going to do while we wait?" Cole asked.

"Do you three have any games you'd like to play, or do you want me to come up with something to do?" Nya asked.

"You should come up with a game," Kai put forward.

"Okay. How about you three go to you guys' room and I'll grab something to play and meet you there?" Nya suggested.

The boys nodded agreeably and scurried below deck.

Nya followed them a little ways, then peeled off in search of a game. She found a deflated beach ball tucked in the back of the closet that held Lloyd's old young things and seized it, bringing it with her. She started toward the boys' room, then she paused and changed direction, heading toward the kitchen.

Entering the kitchen, she saw Wu busy at the table, placing bits of meat and vegetable on skewers and setting the completed items on a tray.

"Shish kebobs, huh?" Nya asked.

Wu nodded. "I assume you're here to see what my plans are for tomorrow?"

"Yes, but make it quick, please. I've got to get back to the boys," Nya stated, taking out the beach ball. "Mind if I blow this up while you talk?"

"Go right ahead. Basically, tomorrow we will go shopping for anything the boys will need, mainly clothes. Then, to celebrate, we will go to Mega Monster Amusement Park as a treat," Wu reported, placing the last shish kebob on the tray. He began transferring the kebabs to the grill section of the stove.

Nya leaned back from the beach ball and nodded. "Sounds good to me. Should I tell the boys and Lloyd, or just Lloyd?"

"Go ahead and tell them all, but only tell Lloyd the part about the amusement park. I want it to be a surprise, or at least something we can tell them when they start misbehaving at the store," Wu said.

Nya chuckled. "Got it. I'm going to head back to the boys' room now."

"Have fun," Wu advised, setting the stove's settings.

"Will do," Nya tossed over her shoulder as she left. She made quick tracks to the boys' room, finishing blowing up the beach ball as she went. Entering with the beach ball under one arm, she was greeted with the sight of Kai chasing Cole around the room with Jay riding piggy-back, the littlest boy's arms around Cole's shoulders.

"Nya's back!" Kai cheered, skidding to a stop.

Cole stopped as well and knelt, allowing Jay to get off his back.

"Nice, a blow-up beach ball," Kai remarked, seeing the object Nya held.

"What are we going to play with a beach ball?" Cole wondered.

"We can play a lot of different games," Nya revealed. "We could play Monkey in the Middle, or do relays, or Ball Tag, or I could get some brooms and we could do beach ball hockey, or any number of things."

"Monkey in the Middle!" Kai suggested.

"Ooo, yes," Jay agreed.

"I don't know what that is, but I'll play it," Cole figured.

"So, Monkey in the Middle is played with three or more people. One person gets between the others, and that person is the monkey. The other players toss or roll or kick the ball back and forth between them, and the monkey tries to get the ball. If the monkey gets the ball, the last player to touch the ball before the monkey is the new monkey," Nya explained.

"Sounds hard, but fun," Cole summed up. "Let's do it!"

"I'll be the monkey first. I'll show you how it's done," Kai boasted.

Nya, Cole, and Jay spread around the room with Kai standing in the center of the makeshift triangle.

"Ready?" Nya asked.

"Ready!" Jay, Kai, and Cole all said together.

Nya tossed the beach ball gently over Kai's head to Cole. Kai leapt as high as he could and almost got the ball, but he jumped just a moment too late and the ball sailed over his head.

Cole jumped a little and caught the ball, cradling it in his arms. "Okay, coming back your way, Miss Nya!"

He made as if to throw the beach ball at Nya and Kai rushed between them, but at the last moment Cole turned and rolled the beach ball to Jay.

Jay picked the ball up and held it over his head triumphantly, almost falling over backward as he overbalanced. Before he could fall over, however, he chucked the ball at Cole and regained his balance. "Comin' at you!"

The beach ball bounced off the ground just a few feet away from Cole. Kai dove for it, narrowly snatching it off the ground and pulling it into his arms. "Ha! Got it!"

"Awww," Jay groaned. "Now I'm in the m-middle."

"You sure are," Kai teased as he passed Jay on his way to take the second youngest boy's spot.

Jay got to the middle and turned around. "I'm ready when you are, Kai."

"All right, here goes nothin'," Kai stated, and he threw the ball in Cole's direction.

They had played for several more minutes when a knock sounded on the door frame and Lloyd's voice called in, "You guys in there?"

"Come on in, Lloyd," Nya called back.

Lloyd entered, leading Zane by the hand. The littlest boy's face was still slightly damp, but he appeared clean even as he still wore his old clothes.

"I don't suppose we have any pajamas that'll fit," Lloyd said, half-questioning but mostly stating it.

Nya shook her head and said clearly so that all five boys including Lloyd could hear, "That's why we're spending tomorrow going clothes shopping."

"Awww, I hate shopping," Kai groaned.

"What, you wanna us to wear these fight suits for the rest of our lives?" Cole asked.

"No, I guess not," Kai admitted begrudgingly. "But that doesn't mean I'm gonna like shopping."

"Storm, your turn to take a bath," Lloyd pointed out, looking relieved now that he finally knew what was so important about the next day.

Jay groaned loudly, but he followed Lloyd out of the room obediently.

"Ghost, we're playing Monkey in the Middle. It's like playing Catch, but someone's in the middle and tries to get the ball," Kai explained. "Wanna play?"

Zane nodded eagerly.

"Go stand there, where Storm was a second ago," Cole directed from his spot in the middle.

Zane obeyed, standing where he had just see Jay stand against one of the walls.

"Okay, game on," Nya declared, lobbing the beach ball at Kai.

Cole jumped for it, but he miscalculated his timing and leapt right into the path of the beach ball. It hit him in the face.

Kai, Nya, and Zane winced as one.

"You good, Cole?" Kai asked, watching Cole put a hand over his face.

Cole made a face and spoke through his hand. "I think that just loosened one of my teeth."

"Is it a baby tooth?" Nya asked quickly.

"Yeah, so it's fine. And it was already kinda loose, that just made it more loose," Cole explained. "I'm fine, it didn't hurt or nothing. I'm good."

"Then let's keep playing," Kai decided.

Nya nodded, but she decided to keep an eye on Cole just in case the beach ball hit harder than it should have. She slightly regretted throwing it so hard, but figured even if she had thrown it as hard as she could, it wouldn't have done too much damage as it was still just a blow-up beach ball.

"Did that count as me catching it?" Cole asked.

Laughing a little, Nya allowed, "Sure, that counted, but just this once. No purposefully trying to get hit in the face with the ball so you don't have to actually catch it. I'm looking at you, brother."

"What?" Kai protested. "I would never!"

"Yes, you would," Nya and Cole countered in unison, switching places.

"You're right, I would," Kai agreed with a smirk, and he quickly threw the ball to Zane while Nya was distracted.

Nya wasn't nearly distracted enough, though, and she reached out one arm and snagged the beach ball out of the air as it passed her.

"Aw, no," Kai groaned, begrudgingly swapping spots with his sister.

Nya took the ball with her and passed it to Cole, who passed it back to Nya, who passed it to Zane, who tried to pass it to Cole but Kai grabbed it before it could reach the oldest of the young boys.

"Ghost is the monkey, Ghost is the monkey," Kai sing-songed teasingly.

Zane looked confused.

"That means you get in the middle, Ghost," Cole explained.

Obligingly, Zane walked into the middle. He looked around, as if to say, "So now what?"

"Now you try to get the ball. Kai, pass it to me," Nya encouraged.

Kai lobbed the ball over Zane's head in his sister's direction.

Zane reached up for it, stretching as high as he could, but he couldn't get it.

The ball made several trips back and forth over Zane's head or just out of his reach, even as he jumped and spun and dove for it.

After a good three minutes of tossing the beach ball back and forth without Zane getting close to it, Nya took pity on the littlest boy and rolled the ball in Zane's direction right through the middle.

Zane ran toward the ball and scooped it up, holding it close.

"That's no fair, you're going easy on him!" Kai pouted at Nya.

"Is it fair that he's so much shorter than me, or even you and Midnight?" Nya pointed out, taking Zane's place in the middle and allowing the boy to have her previous spot.

Kai's face cleared slowly. "I, I didn't think of that. I guess it's okay. But don't go easy on me or Midnight, okay?"

"Of course not," Nya agreed, secretly making a pact with herself to never let Kai, at least while he was still a young boy, see how good she really was at games revolving around athletics.

Lloyd came back into the room, this time escorting a freshly-washed Jay, whose wet hair stuck up wildly all over the place. "He wouldn't let me brush his hair. He said he needed to get back here and keep playing as soon as possible. I guess his hair will just get itself back into shape eventually?"

"Storm, please run your hands through your hair a few times," Nya directed.

Jay obeyed, and after a few strokes of his hands his hair took a position much closer to his regular hairstyle. "Is this good? Can I ppplay again?"

"Yes and yes," Nya approved.

"Yes and no," Wu stated, poking his head into the room. "Supper is ready."

"Yesss, I'm starving," Kai responded. He ran out of the room, then ran back in. "Uh, where's the dining room?"

"I can lead the way for you, Blood," Wu replied.

Kai followed Wu, and Lloyd, Jay, Cole, and Zane followed Kai. Nya brought up the rear after tucking the beach ball into a corner.

The shish kebabs were good, not as good as they would've been if Zane had made them back when he was old enough to cook, but still good. After supper and cleaning up, Lloyd tried to escort Kai to the bathroom, but Kai put up a fight.

"No bath yet, I want dessert," Kai argued stubbornly.

"Yes bath now, we don't have dessert," Lloyd argued back.

"Make dessert," Kai stated angrily.

"We're not making dessert," Lloyd stated calmly.

"Go buy some dessert," Kai begged.

"We're not going and buying dessert," Lloyd replied.

"We actually do have dessert, if you kids really want some," Wu interjected.

Kai raised his arms in the air. "Victory!"

Lloyd laughed.

"We have some of Za- some old cookies left from a while back. They may be slightly stale, but they should still taste delicious," Wu stated. He went to the cupboard and brought out a tin. "Here we are."

"Mmm, look good," Cole approved. He reached out and snagged a cookie, bringing it to his mouth and chomping down. "Oh!"

"What?" Kai demanded.

Cole spit out the chunk of cookie and held it up. "It was stale. Really stale. Look!"

From the cooked dough protruded a tooth.

"Your tooth came out!" Jay shrieked. "M-midnight, that's not good! Did someone p-punch you in the face again?"

"Someone punched Midnight in the face?" Lloyd asked incredulously.

"Was it Garmadon?" Nya asked, quickly starting to get very angry. "Because if it was-"

"It was Bytar," Kai replied.

"Why were you hanging out with the Serpentine?" Wu questioned.

"They were our babysitters," Kai said casually. "And they helped teach us fight, which is why Bytar punched Cole in the face. It was also an accident."

"How do you accidentally punch a kid in the face?" Lloyd asked.

"Let's stop talking about that and talk about the fact that Mmmidnight is losing his teeth," Jay said hysterically. "Wwwe've gotta go to a doctor, that's not supposed to happen."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down there, Storm. It actually is supposed to happen," Cole interjected, slinging an arm around Jay's shoulders reassuringly.

"Since wwwhen?" Jay demanded.

"Since like about a year ago for me. It happens to everyone. You have baby teeth that you get as a baby, then you have adult teeth that you get when you're like six to thirteen. But to make room for your adult teeth, you've gotta lose your baby teeth. They get loose and then they just fall out. Mine was a little loose, then while you were taking a bath I got hit in the face with the beach ball and it got a lot looser, then when I was eating supper it got even looser, and then I bit into the stale cookie and it came out," Cole explained. "You don't have to worry about it, it's completely normal, and it'll happen to you too."

Not looking convinced, Jay turned to Wu. "Is that true?"

"It's true. There's nothing for you to worry about. Midnight is fine," Wu agreed.

Jay blew out a loud breath. "Phew. I w-was really w-worried. I had no idea."

"I guess that means dessert is off if the cookies are so hard they knocked out Cole's tooth," Kai sighed. "Okay. I'll go take my bath now."

"Let's go," Lloyd said amiably, and he led the way.

"You three want to come back and play more Monkey in the Middle?" Nya asked Cole, Jay, and Zane.

She was answered by a trio of eager nods.

"That decides then," Nya stated, and she turned to Wu. "Want to join us? It's the ball game we were playing. It's plenty of fun."

"I haven't played a ball game for a long time," Wu mused, stroking his beard. "I suppose it couldn't hurt to join you."

"Mister Wu's playing!" Cole cheered.

The five of them walked back to the boys' room and started playing Monkey in the Middle. Nya was very impressed, although not surprised, by Wu's agility. The three boys were both impressed and surprised.

Their merry game went for several minutes before it was interrupted by Lloyd and Kai entering. Kai's hair was messily spiked in what appeared to be Lloyd's best attempt to give the young boy his normal hairstyle. Nya knew that it was only a matter of minutes before Kai would shake his head and his hair would fall into its normal style, and she was immediately proven right as Kai shook his head wildly. His hair fell into its natural hairstyle.

"I spent a whole minute trying to do that and you just shake your head and it happens?" Lloyd protested playfully. "You could've told me."

"It's more fun this way," Kai said smugly. "Midnight, your turn. And you can ask Mister Lloyd to wait outside the door just in case, he's okay with not being in the room. I'm big enough to take baths alone and so are you."

"Got it. I'm ready," Cole told Lloyd.

Kai took Cole's place. "Let's get playing again!"

"I actually think it's time you boys get ready for bed," Wu pointed out.

"Wwwhat? Can't wwwe ppplay until M-midnight comes back?" Jay begged.

"That depends. What is you boys' bedtime routine?" Nya asked.

"Normally we just go to bed. Sometimes we get a story," Kai answered.

"Then we'll read a story, and by the time Midnight gets back, you three will be all sleepy and ready to go to bed," Nya figured.

"Two stories, one for the three of us and one for the four of us w-with M-midnight," Jay bargained.

"Deal," Wu agreed. "Nya, if you would head to my study? I have a few of Lloyd's books there for memory purposes."

"Will do," Nya agreed easily.

She headed out the door and, as she exited, heard Wu saying, "Let's pick out who's sleeping where."

Nya went to the study and looked around. It took some searching, but she found the books Wu spoke of and returned to the boys' room with a selection of them in tow.

She found Wu helping Kai up the ladder of one of the bunk beds with Zane in the bottom bunk and Jay in the bottom bunk across the room.

"I've got some books to pick from. We've got _The Abomination Altercation_ , which is a graphic novel or a really thick comic book, I'm not sure; _Ivy Goes to Third Grade_ , which looks cute but kind of boring; _Fritz Donnegan Number Fourteen_ , which might be a bit too active for a bedtime story; _The Doghouse Puppies Have a Party_ , which looks okay; and _Jack the Rabbit_ , which looks pretty good," Nya reported.

"Let's do those last two," Kai said, already sounding a bit sleepy.

"I w-wanna hear _The Abomination Altercation_ ," Jay argued.

"You just wanna hear it because it's the longest one and you want to stay up," Kai pointed out.

Jay wriggled deeper into his covers. "So?"

Wu chuckled. "I believe the last two are the best two for tonight."

Nya handed the two books over. "I'll go put the others back, if that's okay with you."

Nodding to her, Wu sat down. He placed _Jack the Rabbit_ next to him and opened _The Doghouse Puppies Have a Party_. "Bella and Buddy were enjoying a nice day just outside the doghouse."

Nya headed back to the study and replaced the three books on the shelf. She started to head back to the bedroom, but she changed her mind. Instead, she headed to the biggest bathroom.

She saw Lloyd waiting outside the closed door. She could just barely hear splashing going on inside the bathroom.

"Hey," Lloyd greeted. "Cole should be getting done soon. He said he bathes fast. Well, actually, he said that he gets clean easy and I don't need to wait, but I'm taking that to mean he bathes fast. How are Kai, Jay, and Zane?"

"Wu's got the other three in bed and is reading them a story," Nya explained, then lowered her voice. "Can Midnight hear us talking out here?"

"Not if you whisper like that," Lloyd returned in similarly hushed tones.

"Good. I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow won't just be shopping. We're also going to the Mega Monster Amusement Park afterward as a treat," Nya whispered.

"Cool!" Lloyd exclaimed, then he hushed himself. "I mean, cool. That'll be fun. For the boys, I mean. Not for me. I'm too old for that."

"Right," Nya said dryly.

The splashing stopped and Cole's voice called out, "I'm getting out now!"

"The towels are on the rack where I point them out before," Lloyd called through the door. "Go ahead and get dried off and redressed, then come out when you're ready."

"'Kay!" Cole yelled back.

"It's okay to get excited, Lloyd," Nya whispered.

"No, it's not. I'm older now and I need to act like it," Lloyd said, pouting like a child.

"Opinions may vary on that, but even if you are that much older, it's okay to show emotion. You can enjoy going to amusement parks. I know I still like some of the things I liked as a kid, and that's okay too," Nya stated.

Lloyd's shoulders slumped. "I just- I'm the green ninja. I've got to be the green ninja. I've got to be grown-up, because I've got to do all these grown-up things."

"You can do both 'grown-up' things and 'kid' things. You need a balance of things you have to do and things you want to do. It's okay," Nya encouraged.

"I'll think about it," Lloyd allowed after a long moment.

"And I'll take that," Nya said with a sad smile.

Behind Lloyd, the door swung open and Cole stepped out, back in his little fight suit. He was yawning, but he tried to cover it when he saw Lloyd and Nya looking at him.

"All right, bedtime for you," Nya said with a genuine grin.

"Noooo," Cole moaned, but he smiled a little. Nya could tell that he could tell that he was tired.

Nya led the way back to the boys' room, where she, Lloyd, and Cole saw an interesting sight. Jay and Kai were out of bed, leaning against each of Wu's sides. Zane was sitting up in bed, head on top of Wu's head as the little boy peered down at the storybook in Wu's hands.

"The End," Wu said.

The three boys surrounding him sighed happily.

"Good story?" Cole asked, walking over to his brothers.

"Midnight, you're back," Kai said, blinking sleepily up at him.

"And you guys had a bedtime story without me," Cole teased, settling beside Jay.

"Wwwe're gonna do another one," Jay offered, promptly yawning as soon as he finished speaking.

"Oh yeah? What's the other one called?" Cole asked.

" _Jack the Rabbit_ ," Wu answered.

Beside Nya, Lloyd breathed in sharply.

Nya looked at him.

Lloyd's face was a mix of emotions, hurt and realization and acceptance and longing.

Nya nudged him over to the wall and sat down. Lloyd slid down the wall and sat next to her. They listened to the story, or rather, Lloyd listened and Nya watched Lloyd.

"And that is why, Jack the Rabbit never trusts a snake. The end," Wu said simply, bringing the book to a close.

Nya turned at those words and looked at Wu. She startled and forced back a laugh. Jay and Zane were both slumped over on Wu, fast asleep. Kai's eyelids were fluttering, as if he was fighting sleep with all he had and was very close to losing. Cole was awake and alert, but he was yawning impressively widely.

"Nya, Lloyd, if you wouldn't mind," Wu said quietly.

Nya headed over to him and gently rearranged Zane so that he was lying on the pillow and the bed rather than Wu's head and shoulder. She looked back at Lloyd, who looked lost in thought, then picked up Jay and moved him to his own bed. Quietly, she asked, "Midnight, Blood, are you two good with getting back into bed on your own?"

"Uh, probably," Kai said reluctantly. He climbed the ladder without help and collapsed into his bed.

"I can do it myself," Cole said sleepily, staggering to a standing position. Feet dragging and Nya and Wu hovering around him in case he fell asleep standing up, Cole made it to his bunk bed, up the ladder, and into bed. "G'night, Mister Wu, Miss Nya, Mister Lloyd."

"Goodnight," Wu and Nya said together.

Lloyd said nothing.

Cole peered out into the room. "Mister Lloyd? You okay?"

"I'm okay," Lloyd said in a distant voice. "Good night, Cole."

Cole hummed absentmindedly at that and allowed his head to hit his pillow, closing his eyes at last. His breath evened out almost immediately as he fell right to sleep.

Wu went to Lloyd and helped him up with a steadying hand at his nephew's elbow. Lloyd let him, seemingly in a daze.

"Things will look better in the morning," Wu told him kindly.

Lloyd just shrugged and allowed his uncle to lead him out of the room.

Nya followed them to the doorway, turning out the light in the room.

"Wait," Kai blurted from his bed, making Nya pause. "Can, c'n you leave the hallway light on and the door part of the way open? I'm kinda scared of the dark. Only kinda."

Nya smiled at him, although she wasn't sure if he could see it. "Sure thing, Blood. Good night, bro."

Kai smiled back, closing his eyes and lying back. "Good night, sis."

Nya took one last look at the boys, four of the people who meant the most to her but the four of whom were currently just out of her reach, then closed the door most of the way to wait for the morning.


	17. Tonight's gonna be a good night

**AN: Welcome to the seventeenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" I've got a lot to say about this chapter: 1, ship warning: mild mentions of past Jaya; 2, Schrödinger's shoes make their return; and 3, this sucker is over 8,000 words (I'm sad that it's not _over 9,000!)_. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas, "Tonight's gonna be a good night." ****The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "To The Sky" by Owl City, "Dear friends in higher places, carry me away from here" and "This Used To Be My Playground" by Madonna, "No regrets, but I wish that you were here with me. Well then there's hope yet, I can see your face."**

* * *

Jay was going to die. Because he was bored, bored, bored out of his mind. "Can wwwe go now?"

"Not yet, we still have a lot of things to buy," Mister Wu said calmly. He gestured to the shopping cart Lloyd was pushing. "So far all we have is pajamas, pants, and underclothes like socks, which are nice, but not all that children need."

"What's next on the list?" Kai asked, obviously just as not-excited as Jay was at the prospect of more shopping.

"Shirt section," Wu instructed Lloyd.

Lloyd smiled in acknowledgement and turned the shopping cart.

"Can't we just leave?" Kai complained.

"If you stop being so sour about it, it'll go a lot faster," Cole chided from his spot helping Lloyd control the shopping cart.

Jay pouted. He wanted to be done and gone, but they had to get more stuff just 'cause they "couldn't wear their fight suits for forever", which was stupid, because Jay totally could wear his fight suit all the time. Okay, maybe not for forever though, he would probably get too tall for it. Jay was totally gonna be tall when he got older.

"Can I at least take a turn with the cart?" Kai begged.

"Nope," Lloyd stated.

"C'mon, I wanna race it down the aisles," Kai pleaded.

"And that's why you're not getting a turn with the cart," Lloyd teased good-naturedly.

Now it was Kai's turn to pout.

"Shirt section, on our left," Nya announced.

Lloyd and Cole turned the cart together and they all headed into the shirt section.

"Can I at least get some cool shirts?" Kai asked.

"Depends on what you call 'cool'," Nya stated. "If you want one that says 'I'm the awesomest so deal with it' on it, then no. But if you want the ones that has a racecar on it, then quite possibly."

"Is quite possibly 'yes'?" Kai said slyly.

Nya shook her head. "Quite possibly is quite possibly."

"Here we are," Lloyd interrupted.

"May I help you?" A woman in a sales outfit butted in, popping up in front of them.

"No thank you," Nya said politely, even though this was the fifth-billionth time this had happened and Jay totally would be snapping at the next sales person who popped up. "We're good, thanks."

The woman smiled at them and walked away, although not before saying, "If you need any help, I'll be at the service desk right over there."

"We'll keep that in mind," Nya stated. As soon as the woman was gone, though, Nya admitted, "Normally when I go clothes shopping I just grab the first thing that looks comfortable and is near my size and I get going, so I'm don't really know what I'm doing."

"I think we should take a little more care than that. We don't want to have to make another trip," Wu remarked. He eyed the shirts lined up neatly on their racks. "These all look too big. We should go further in and find the kids' section."

"According to that sign, the kids' section is over there," Cole said helpfully, pointing.

"'According to that sign', blah blah blah," Kai muttered, following as they entered the kids' section.

"Be content with being here and it'll take less time," Cole chided again.

"Whatever," Kai moaned.

"These look like some good shirts, lots designs, nice fabric," Wu pointed out. "Boys, each pick three shirts to try on."

"Wwwe gotta try them on?" Jay gasped. This was going to take way longer than he wanted it to take. "They've got sizes on 'em for a reason. Wwwe don't need to try them on."

"Do you want to come back tomorrow because nothing fits?" Nya asked.

Jay shook his head fervently.

Nya smiled. "Then we're going to try them on."

Jay picked three shirts and obediently followed his brothers to the changing room. He tried on the three shirts one by one, then he put his fight suit shirt back on and headed into the common area, calling out, "Mine all work!"

"Let me see them," Lloyd inquired.

"I've got this blue shirt with a basketball hoop on it, this gray shirt with yellow stripes, and this yellow shirt with a fake tie printed on it," Jay said, holding up each shirt in turn.

"Looks good. The others are already over in the pants section. Let's go," Lloyd instructed.

Jay followed Lloyd to the pants section just as he was told to do, and picked out three pairs of pants just as he was told to do, and tried them all on just as he was told to do, and put them in the cart when Wu approved just as he was told to do.

"Can we go now?" Jay begged once Kai, Cole, and Ghost had all picked out their pants too.

"We need shoes. You can't wear the cloth boots that came with your fight suits for everything. To the shoe section," Wu instructed Lloyd.

"Not shoes! Shoes are the worst to shop for!" Kai complained.

"Stop complaining; if you do-" Cole began.

"We won't have to spend as much time here, I know," Kai said with a scowl. "Lemme guess, we need three pairs of shoes too?"

"No, just one pair each, and we might need some help this time," Nya allowed.

As if called for, a man in a sales outfit appeared. "May I help you?"

"Yes. We want to get these four sized for new shoes," Nya stated.

The man smiled and pulled out a device that looked like a torture instrument to Jay's eyes. "Sounds good. Who's first?"

"I'll go," Cole volunteered after a moment of silence.

"Sit on this bench and take off one of your shoes but leave your sock on," the man instructed, smiling.

Cole obeyed him, sticking out one socked foot.

The man put the device to Cole's foot and moved some dials. "All right. Next."

Kai raised his hand. "I want to get it over with."

"As good a reason as any," the man said with another smile. "Sit down and take off one shoe, kiddo."

Kai did as he asked with a scowl on his face the whole time.

The man did the same thing to Kai's foot, then released it. "Got it. Next."

"I can go," Jay said after looking at the scared look on Ghost's face.

"Come on over, kid," The man said, smiling even more. (Jay was beginning to think that this guy didn't know how to not smile.)

Jay sat obediently. He giggled a little when the man put the device to his foot and moved the dials. "Oh, that tickles!"

"Hold still," the man admonished, only smiling a little now.

Jay held as still as he could.

"Looks good. One more to go," the man said cheerily.

Ghost stepped forward and sat down, still looking scared.

Gently, the man used the device on Ghost's foot then let him go. "Okay. Let me go get some merchandise, and I'll be right back with you in a moment."

"What's 'merchandise'?" Jay questioned.

"Stuff to buy," Cole answered.

"Oh," Jay said thoughtfully.

"I wanna go home, I wanna go home," Kai groaned.

"Remember where we get to go after this if you behave," Lloyd put forward.

"Mega Monster Amusement Park, big whoop," Kai muttered.

"C'mon, Bbblood, it's gonna be fun!" Jay encouraged.

"Put some happiness in your voice," Cole instructed.

"Mega Monster Amusement Park, big whoop!" Kai said fake-cheerily.

"I mean, he did w-what you said," Jay observed.

"C'mon, Blood. It'll be amazing. Rides and food and games and prizes," Cole encouraged.

"Yeah, and sweat and walking and noise and people," Kai grouched.

"You're just a big fussbudget today, aren't you?" Nya cooed.

"Am not!" Kai protested, standing straighter.

"Are too," Nya retorted.

"Am not," Kai growled.

"Then prove it. Be happy. Find something positive, something good, something to look forward to," Nya challenged.

Kai blinked, then he blinked again. "Well, I guess I'm looking forward to the games. I'm pretty good at the darts and balloons one."

"There you go. Trust me, you're going to enjoy Mega Monster Amusement Park," Nya promised.

"Oh, Mega Monster Amusement Park? Is that where you're headed after this?" The man asked with a smile, appearing in front of them again, this time loaded down with shoe boxes. "I guess that explains why you're dressed up like the ninja. I hear they had Ninja Day there last week, although you boys are a little late."

"You got it in one," Miss Nya said quickly, trying to change the subject for some reason. Jay didn't understand any of what had just happened, because he didn't know of any ninja except on TV and he didn't know about any "Ninja Day" either. So Jay just shrugged it off and refocused on the man holding the shoe boxes, eager for his new shoes despite himself.

"All right, so you with the black hair, this pair is for you. They're sandals with lots of straps, so they won't go flying off when you play," the man promised, smiling widely.

Cole took off both boots and tried on the sandals, grinning as he stepped from one foot to the other. "They work great."

"Thought so. You with the brown spiky hair, these are yours. A yellow pair of tennis shoes. They've got shoelaces, are you up to the task?" The man asked fake-seriously, his voice broken by his smile.

"I know I am," Kai said with determination, tying the shoelaces quickly and skillfully.

"Buddy with the hair that is either red or brown depending on what angle I'm looking at it from, these should go well for you," the man said with a smile.

Jay took the shoes from him. They were blue, which was perfect, with white stripes, which was okay. They were kind of like a mix between Kai's tennis shoes and Cole's strappy sandals, held together by velcro. He sat in place and tore off his boots, eagerly putting on his new shoes. "I love them!"

"As I figured. All right, little blond guy, you ready for your shoes?" The man stated, smiling as he held up a slip-on pair of slightly fancy white shoes.

Ghost held out his hands and received the shoes, putting them on to replace his boots. He smiled back at the man shyly but happily.

"Looks good. Do you boys want to wear them out or put them in boxes?" The man asked with a smile.

"Wwwear 'em out!" Jay cheered.

"Sounds good to me," Cole said.

Kai nodded, a small smile taking the place of his scowl.

Ghost just jumped up and down in place, seemingly fascinated by the feel of his new shoes.

"We'll wear them out. I can take the boxes," Lloyd stated. He grabbed the shoe boxes and placed them in the cart. "I think that's everything. Let's go check out."

They made it to the checkout counter successfully and were able to buy everything. It was easy to find the Destiny's Bounty where it was parked in the parking lot, because it was so much bigger than all the cars around it.

"I'll get us headed to Mega Monster Amusement Park from the bridge," Nya volunteered, leaving them on deck, probably so she could go to the bridge.

"We should get you boys changed into your new clothes," Lloyd decided, arms full of shopping bags. "To your room!"

"To our room!" Jay repeated happily, ready to put on his cool new clothes. He dashed ahead, making it to the bedroom first, and then he had to wait for a minute as Wu deposited his shopping bags and left, Kai and Cole and Ghost entered, and Lloyd put down his own shopping bags and closed the door. Lloyd began sorting through the bags, putting things into four piles with Kai, Cole, Ghost, and Jay hovering over him, occasionally helping once they caught on to what he was doing.

"Okay, these are Midnight's things in this pile over here, these are Blood's, these are Storm's, and these are Ghost's. Go wild, guys. And once you're done, stack them neatly under the bottom bunk of the bunk bed you sleep in," Lloyd instructed.

Jay picked out his blue shirt with the basketball hoop, a pair of light gray pants, and some new white socks to go with the white stripes on his new shoes. He was able to get changed super fast, mostly because he could work the velcro on his shoes all on his own. All dressed, he looked around the room.

Cole had selected a black t-shirt with a dinosaur on it, one that Jay thought was called a "Grandle" or "Grumble" or something like that, and an orange long-sleeved shirt under it. He also had on jeans and his new sandals, which he was using to kick the still-inflated beach ball around as he waited. (He had probably gotten all dressed before Jay had and been waiting for a little bit, because Cole's shoes were slip-on sandals and didn't require velcro manipulation.)

Outfitted in a shirt with red and black stripes and dark gray pants with red stripes down the side, Kai was just finishing tying the shoelaces of his new shoes. His tongue was sticking out in concentration, and if Jay hadn't known that Kai was just focusing on getting his shoelaces right, Jay would've guessed from Kai's face that the slightly older boy was fighting the worst enemy of his life.

Finally, there was Ghost. The youngest boy had on a pale creamy almost-white shirt, a fancy-ish one, one with a collar and a couple of buttons by the neck. He was wearing black pants with a weird word Jay assumed was the brand name of the pants up by the hem on one side and colorful rainbow socks with his new white shoes.

"Ready?" Lloyd asked once Kai had tied both shoes and stood up.

"Ready!" Jay chirped eagerly. He was, in fact, more than ready to go; Mega Monster Amusement Park was gonna be awesome!

"Yeah, we're all ready," Kai agreed, trying to sound cool, but he was bouncing up and down in barely-concealed excitement.

"Ready as ready gets," Cole added happily.

Ghost nodded his agreement and ran to the door, nearly running into it as Lloyd swung it open.

"Let's head to the bridge," Lloyd stated, heading out the door and leading the way.

They made it to the large room quickly.

"Nya! Check out my new clothes!" Kai crowed as soon as he saw his sister standing at the wheel. He ran over to her and pulled on her arm, trying to get her to look at him. "Check them out, check them out!"

"I'll check them out in moment, Blood, but first I've got to land the Destiny's Bounty," Nya explained patiently, not looking away from the window she was staring out of to land the ship.

Kai backed away and pouted, then he spotted Mister Wu across the room staring at a map. Running over to him, Kai grabbed Wu's sleeve. "Hey, Mister Wu! Check my new clothes out!"

"I do believe the woman at the store did that already," Mister Wu said with a straight face, turning to the boy.

Jay giggled.

Kai scrunched up his face in thought. "Wait a minute. No! Not like that! I meant look at my new clothes, not check out."

"I'm looking at them right now," Wu stated calmly.

"No, I mean compliment them!" Kai groaned, stomping one foot in frustration.

"Oooh, of course. You look very nice and so do your new clothes," Wu said politely.

"Thank you," Kai said exasperatedly.

"You said you're landing, are we there?" Lloyd said very casually to Nya.

"Yeah, pretty much. I figured we should park a little further out than most people do, given we take up like four parking spaces and we're going to be here for a while," Nya answered.

The Destiny's Bounty rocked slightly. Nya took her hands off the wheel and turned around. "All set down. Blood, do you still want me to check out your clothes, or did Wu give you enough attention?"

"Forget about it," Kai grumped.

"Aw, don't be like that, Blood. We're going to Mega Monster Amusement Park!" Cole exclaimed.

"We're not going, we're already there," Kai pointed out.

"Then there's even more reason to be excited," Cole said happily.

Slowly, Kai started to smile. "I guess so. I mean, this is gonna be pretty fun."

"Pppretty fun? It's gonna bbbe amazing!" Jay squealed.

"Before we go out there, we need to set some ground rules. Rule one: none of you four boys go anywhere alone or with a stranger," Wu stated, gesturing at Ghost, Kai, Cole, and Jay. "Rule two: if you four want to buy something, ask. You will not be given money of your own, because you will likely lose it in the first five minutes. Rule three: we will be here for two hours exactly. You will be given warnings on how much time is left, so when it's time to leave, no complaining. Rule four: have fun."

"I like rule four the best," Kai commented.

"Can we go now?" Jay asked one more time, this time talking about the amusement park.

Wu smiled. "Yes."

"All right, let's go!" Lloyd cheered. He coughed awkwardly. "I mean, let's go."

"You're silly, Mister Lloyd," Cole said decisively.

"Yeah, but he has great toys, so that makes up for it," Kai added.

"Not to mention I'm an all-around awesome dude," Lloyd put forth.

Kai made a "meh" sound, but he was grinning. "I wouldn't go that far."

"Oh really?" Lloyd teased.

The two of them bickered all the way out of the Destiny's Bounty and up to the gate of Mega Monster Amusement Park, much to Jay's delight. He loved a good argument, although he didn't much like being one of the ones arguing.

"Will you be buying wristbands or tickets today, or just walking around?" The teenage girl just inside the entrance called out to them as soon as they got close, cutting off Lloyd's rebuttal to Kai's latest retort.

"What's the difference?" Wu wondered, walking to her booth.

"Wristbands give you unlimited rides and five free games. Tickets pay for a ride or a game each. The food booths will sell for tickets or money, and the restaurants only take money," the teen explained, pointing to a sign that explained all that as well as the prices for various packages.

"We will take a roll of tickets, please," Wu said, taking out some money and placing it on the counter in front of him.

The teen nodded and pulled out a roll of tickets, placing it on the counter in front of Wu and taking the money. "Excellent choice, sir. Enjoy your time Mega Monster Amusement Park!"

"We will," Mister Wu said politely.

The group walked into the main opening of the Mega Monster Amusement Park grounds and stood stock still. In front of and all around them were rides, games, food booths, and so much more. Signs blinked and flashed, proclaiming attractions, and amusement park workers called out the qualities of the individual parts of the park they worked at to the group.

"What does everyone want to do first?" Wu asked.

"Games," Kai said decisively before anyone else could speak up.

"I hear games, so let's do games," Nya put forward.

Kai raised his fists in the air in victory.

"Whack-a-Snake looks fun," Lloyd volunteered, pointing at the attraction. "We should each take a turn at it."

So they headed for Whack-a-Snake. Almost everyone lost, even Wu, who Jay thought should've been good at it, because the man certainly had lived long enough to get good at carnival games. Cole and Nya both won, Cole getting a little prize of a couple of bracelets that glowed in the dark, which he promptly put on, and Nya getting a large prize of a plush stuffed 'animal' in the shape of a toolbox, which she chose over an assortment of teddy bears and flowers.

"Can we do that game over there next?" Cole asked, pointing with a bracelet-adorned hand at a game with a bunch of bowling pins set up in a square on a table.

"We probably shouldn't. I recognize that one, and the prize is a pet goldfish. I don't know about you boys, but I'm not up for caring for a new pet any time soon," Nya debated.

Cole shook his head. "Not that one, then."

"Oh! Oh! Over there. The Mmmega M-monster Snack Shop!" Jay said excitedly.

"That's not a game," Kai teased.

"No, but they have cotton candy. Cotton candy, B-blood!" Jay exclaimed. He looked up at Wu pleadingly. "Can wwwe get some? P-p-please?"

"Sure. We have the tickets for it," Wu said with a shrug. "What would everyone else like?"

"Funnel cake," Cole said immediately.

"I'll have a cotton candy too," Kai stated.

"Funnel cake," Nya agreed with Cole.

"Can I get one of those giant lollipops?" Lloyd wondered.

"You can. What about you, Ghost?" Wu asked the youngest boy.

Ghost looked confused.

"Get cotton candy," Jay coached. "It's really, really good."

"No, get funnel cake, it's even better," Cole argued.

Ghost hesitated, then he pointed at Cole.

"Funnel cake it is," Cole said smugly.

The group went over to the Snack Shop.

"Two cotton candies, three funnel cakes, and a giant lollipop, please," Wu requested of the man working the booth, placing an appropriate amount of tickets on the counter.

The man swept the tickets into his hand with a grunt and went behind a curtain.

"Wwwas that a yes?" Jay hissed questioningly at Kai.

Kai just shrugged. "Dunno."

The man returned with the cotton candies and lollipop in one hand and three little brown paper packages in the other hand. He placed the packages on the counter, handed the cotton candies and lollipop to Wu, and grunted again.

"Everyone say 'thank you,'" Wu instructed.

"Thank you," Jay, Kai, Cole, Lloyd, and Nya chorused.

Ghost did a little bow.

The man grunted, smiled, and did an awkward bow back.

After distributing the food (the little brown paper packages each held a funnel cake covered in powdered sugar, much to Cole's delight) and beginning to eat, the group looked around for their next fun time.

"You! You there!" A voice called out.

They all looked to the right.

"Yes, you, you in the green," an elderly woman was saying from the booth next door. "Come on down to the Guess-O-Meter and test your luck!"

"Is she talking to me?" Mister Lloyd muttered to Miss Nya.

"Yes, I'm talking to you, dear. Come on down!" The woman encouraged.

Lloyd shrugged and walked to her, the rest of the group following on his heels.

"What's the Guess-O-Meter?" Lloyd asked once he was standing in front of the woman.

"Why, it's this handy device right here, the latest tech from the up-and-coming Borg Industries!" The elderly woman exclaimed, holding up what looked like a camera. "You pick a category, take a picture of yourself, and it guesses! It does weight, birthday, age, all sorts of things. What'll it be?"

"He wants to do age," Nya cut in.

"Nya!" Lloyd exclaimed.

Nya grinned. "Come on, it'll be funny."

"Fine. I'll do age," Lloyd told the woman.

"Sound good, sounds good," the woman said happily, holding up the Guess-O-Meter. "Feed two tickets into the machine, now, dear."

Lloyd took a pair of tickets from Wu and fed them into the machine.

"Now I'll just click the category, aaand smile, dear!" The woman instructed, holding up the device.

Lloyd smiled awkwardly.

There was a flash of light, and the elderly woman turned the machine around, showing the screen on the other side. "Just give it a moment aaand there you are!"

"17," the screen read.

Lloyd laughed wryly. "Not quite."

"Oh well. That means you get one ticket back!" The woman stated. She ripped a ticket from a roll hanging on a hook beside and held it out. "Here you are, dear."

"Thank you," Lloyd said politely, taking the ticket. As the group walked away, he elbowed Nya forcefully. "Stop laughing, it's not that funny."

"Oh, but it is. So close, and yet so far," Nya sighed.

"If you're done with your food, hand me your wrappers," Wu cut in, quickly receiving two cotton candy cones, a lollipop stick, and three funnel cake papers.

"Was the Guess-O-Meter really that close?" Kai asked Lloyd.

Lloyd shook his head. "Not really."

"Then how old are you?" Kai challenged.

Lloyd pretended to think about that for a moment. "Hmm. I'd say I'm none-of-your-business years old, thanks for asking."

"That's not a real answer!" Kai protested.

Before Kai could really get going, Mister Lloyd pointed forward and up. "Look, what's that?"

"What's what?" Kai wondered, turning to look where Lloyd was pointing. His eyes went wide. "Oooo. It needs to be time for rides now, 'cause I'm so going on that."

Jay looked too. It was a set of swings suspended way, way, way off the ground. As Jay watched, the swings spun fast, then not so fast, then kind of slow, then really slow, then lowered to the ground and let the passengers off. "I w-wanna go on that too! It's like swings, but cooler!"

"Swings, but cooler. I'm up for it," Cole put forward.

Ghost looked hesitant.

"C'mon, Ghost," Kai coaxed. "Let's do it. Let's do this thing. Let's do the swings."

Ghost just shook his head.

"Not everyone has to go on everything," Wu cut in. "It's perfectly fine for each person to pick and choose what they want to do, just so long as none of you boys are alone, and preferably so long as you boys are not without a caretaker."

"I'll go on the suspended swings with Midnight, Blood, and Storm," Nya volunteered, already grinning in anticipation.

"I won't," Lloyd said, wrinkling his face. "I'm not a fan of spinning."

"And yet you're a master of Spinjitsu," Nya teased happily, handing her plush toolbox to Lloyd for him to hold onto for her.

"That's different," Lloyd dismissed.

"What's 'Spinjitsu'?" Cole asked, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion as he gave what he had left of from his funnel cake to Wu for the old man to save for him.

Lloyd waved a hand. "Nothing you need to worry about right now."

Cole frowned, but he seemed to accept that answer.

"I believe I will stay back as well," Wu stated.

"Can I give the tickets to the ticket-taker then?" Kai asked. He held out his hands. "I won't lose 'em between here and the booth, I promise."

Mister Wu hesitated.

"C'mon, trust me, trust me," Kai pleaded.

That seemed to do it. Wu smiled. "I trust you. How many tickets will you need?"

Kai glanced at the ride, squinting at the sign in front of it. "It looks like three each."

"Expensive for an over-glorified swing," Wu commented. Nonetheless, he tore twelve tickets off of the ticket roll and handed the set to Kai. "Have fun."

"Let's go!" Jay exclaimed, beginning to jog toward the ride.

"Wait up!" Kai complained before running to catch up.

"I'm right behind you!" Cole called.

"As am I!" Nya added.

Jay made it to the ticket booth just steps before Kai. "Ha! Got here first!"

"By like a second," Kai said, joining Jay at the counter.

"Yeah, b-but I got here first," Jay countered.

"A second doesn't count. That's like saying-" Kai began.

The ticket-taker looked down at them, one eyebrow raised, and interjected, "Do you want to get on the ride, or are you just going to argue about who got to my booth first?"

"We want to get on the ride. Here're the tickets for us and for them," Kai explained, pointing over his shoulder to Cole and Nya (who had just joined them at the booth) before slamming his fistful of tickets down on the counter.

The ticket-taker accepted the tickets and waved all four of them through.

Jay dashed to the swings, trying to hop up into one of the seats and failing kind of miserably.

"Need help?" Cole said from behind him.

Jay shook his head. "I got this. Wwwatch me."

Backing up, he took a running start and leapt into the seat. Now standing in the swing seat, he looked down triumphantly at Cole. "Ha!"

"Would you look at that, little Storm did it all on his own," Cole said dramatically. He put one hand to his forehead. "He doesn't need me anymore. Whatever am I to do?"

"Stop being silly, Midnight. You're my b-brother an' I'll always need you. Now get in a swing seat so w-we can get this ride going." Jay said flatly.

Cole laughed out loud. "You're a riot, Storm. You know that? A riot."

"J-just go find a swing seat," Jay dismissed as he sat in the swing seat, but he could feel himself grinning against his will.

Cole went and found a seat on one of the swings, which Kai and Miss Nya had already done. An attendant came around, adjusting straps and helping those of the riders who hadn't already done their straps to do so (this including Jay himself).

Slowly, the swings starting moving, up and up and up, really high, so high that Jay could only just barely see Mister Wu, Mister Lloyd, and Ghost down on the ground just outside the gate for the suspended swing ride. They spun super slow at first, then a little quicker, then a lot quicker. Soon, they were going super fast.

"Awesome!" Cole was yelling from a few swing seats ahead of Jay.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Kai called out gleefully from a few swing seats behind Jay.

"Woo-hoo!" Miss Nya screamed from her spot close to Kai.

Jay didn't say anything. For once, he didn't feel like he needed to. Instead, he just felt the air whip by him and watched the sky pass him by as he was swung around and around and around.

After what felt like forever but still not long enough, the swings began to slow, then they began to drop. Jay's body jolted slightly as the swings came to a stop, and the attendant came around to release each rider from strap after strap.

When Jay got out of his straps at long last, he jumped out of the swing seat and landed neatly on the ground. Looking around, he saw Nya and Kai standing by the gate and Cole walking over to join them, so Jay followed Cole over.

"That w-was amazing," Jay proclaimed.

Cole nodded absentmindedly.

"Mmm," Nya put forward.

Kai shushed Jay.

"Rude," Jay pouted.

"Just look," Kai instructed.

Jay looked. His jaw dropped.

Just outside the gate, Wu and Lloyd were standing side by side with Ghost in between them. They were holding hands, Lloyd with Ghost (with the hand Lloyd wasn't using to hold Nya's toolbox) and Ghost with Wu (with the hand Wu wasn't using to hold the food trash). They were walking forward, and as they walked, Wu was counting.

"One, two, three!" Wu counted.

On three, Wu and Lloyd swung their arms forward and up. Ghost held on tight, and as Wu's and Lloyd's swung, so did Ghost. The small boy's feet left the ground and his body swung forward, then he returned to the ground. It appeared that while Ghost hadn't wanted to go on the big suspended swing, Wu and Lloyd hadn't wanted the little blond to miss out on all of the fun, so they had made their own kind of swing.

"One, two, three," Wu counted again, and again he and Lloyd swung Ghost up and forward. Wu was chuckling, Lloyd was laughing, and someone was giggling.

"Is that- is that Ghost?" Jay said incredulously.

"I think it is. And I think that's the first time he's ever laughed out loud. It's definitely the first time I've ever heard him laugh at the least," Cole wondered.

"That's why I wanted you to shush," Kai explained needlessly. "I can't believe he trusted them enough to let them do that. That's so cool. Good for him."

"All right, I think we've let them have enough fun," Nya declared but with a clear "that's unbelievably cute" look on her face. "Let's go join them, boys."

The four of them walked out of the gate to Wu, Lloyd, and Ghost. As they approached, Lloyd saw them coming. He helped swing Ghost one more time, then let go of the little boy's hand. Wu saw this and let Ghost's other hand go.

Ghost waved to Cole, Kai, Jay, and Nya. He was grinning wider than Jay had seen him grin at least since Lord Garmadon had stopped being their dad.

"Did you enjoy yourselves?" Wu asked.

"Yup, yup, yup," Jay sang.

"It was super cool," Cole added.

Kai nodded in agreement. "What are we doing next?"

"I don't know. I believe it would be best for us to walk around for a little bit," Wu commented.

"Sound good to me," Lloyd put forward, handing the plush toolbox back to Nya.

"Can I hold the tickets until we decide what to do?" Kai begged, trotting alongside Wu.

Wu thought that one over. "You did a good job of buying the swing rides, so yes, you may."

"Yessss," Kai said happily, and he took the ticket roll, hefting it in both hands.

"I can take the food wrappers," Cole volunteered, not one to be outdone by a little brother.

Wu shrugged and handed the crumpled-up food wrappers to the oldest of the young boys.

Jay looked around. Cole was holding the food wrappers and Kai was holding the tickets, but Jay was holding nothing. He felt left out. Jay marched over to Nya. "Can I hold your toolbox?"

"That's an interesting request. Sure," Nya said breezily. She gave him the large plush toolbox, cautioning, "It's heavier than it looks. Two hands!"

Jay obeyed eagerly before the weight of the plush object could tip him over.

"What to do, what to do," Lloyd mused.

"What about that?" Nya asked. She pointed at a large, seemingly empty booth right in front of them that proclaimed "Fun Fotos Fast!"

"That's not how you spell 'photos'," Cole observed, then he thought about it for a second and squinted at the sign. "Is it?"

"No, it's not; they're probably just spelling it like that for 'fun'," Lloyd commented.

"We can do that," Wu agreed with Nya. He stepped up to the booth and called into it, "Hello?"

"Hello! One moment!" A voice called back cheerily. A moment later, a young woman dashed around the pale green curtain that made up the back of the booth and skidded to a stop behind the counter. "Sorry about that, I was just getting new batteries for the camera."

She pulled a camera on a wire out from under the counter and swiftly opened a compartment, popped out some old batteries, and pushed a few new ones in. "Ta-daaa!"

"Is this camera going to guess Mister Lloyd's age wrong too?" Kai asked in what was probably supposed to be a whisper.

The young woman laughed. "Oh, did you try the Guess-O-Meter? I'll admit, I'm surprised it got one of your ages wrong. It got me spot-on. Guess it's still got a ways to go before it's perfect. Anyway, did you want some 'fun fotos fast'?"

"Yes, we would," Wu said amiably.

"Cool, cool, cool. Just step right in," the woman instructed, opening a latch in the counter and swinging a door open.

Wu stepped in all the way to the back wall (well, back curtain), and the rest of the group followed.

"What do we do now?" Nya asked.

"Go ahead and take whatever poses you want in front of that backdrop, then I'll take a few photos for you to choose your favorites from, then you pick what background you want off this computer here and I put it in, then you get a packet of photos," the young woman explained cheerfully.

"Ooo, ooo! Can I pose like this?" Kai asked excitedly. He threw his hands up in the air and tried to balance on one foot.

"If you pose like that, then I'm gonna pose like this," Cole said decisively, putting his hands on his hips and kneeling on the ground.

"Nah, you should pose like this," Kai suggested. He clapped his hands to either side of his face and stuck out his tongue.

"Then you should pose like this," Cole countered, and he promptly did the splits.

Jay gasped and applauded.

"I'm not doing that. I don't think I even can do that," Kai said, eyes bugging out.

"Boys, boys. We're going to pose as if we were normal people," Nya instructed, helping Cole back to his feet.

Lloyd snickered. "'As if'. Good one."

"Oh, hush," Nya said, swatting at him gently.

"I'm not saying you're wrong, and I'm definitely not saying we're normal, I'm just saying that was a nice turn of phrase," Lloyd explained.

Wu cleared his throat. "I believe it would be best if we just stood in front of the backdrop in relatively casual poses."

"That does tend to be best," the young woman in charge of the booth agreed. "I typically suggest going back to whatever you were doing right before you decided to get your photos taken. Then you can take a few as candids and a few looking at the camera."

"Wwwe wwwere just talking b-before w-we came in here," Jay objected.

The woman shrugged. "So talk."

Jay blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. "This is a really soft toolbox."

Kai and Cole roared with laughter.

"It is," Jay protested.

"I agree," Nya said, coming to Jay's rescue and smiling down at him.

Jay stuck out his tongue at Kai and Cole.

"Do you want me to take it back, or are you enjoying holding it because it's so soft?" Nya asked.

Jay thought that over, then he smiled up at her. "I think I like holding it, if that's okay."

"It's okay by me," Nya allowed.

"And I like holding the tickets," Kai added, making sure he got some attention too.

"I'd like holding the food wrappers more if they still held some food," Cole commented, staring down at the trash balled up in his hands. "Ghost, do you want a turn holding something?"

Kai laughed, looking at Ghost. "I think his hands are full."

Jay turned and giggled happily. Behind him, Mister Wu and Mister Lloyd had gone back to swinging Ghost back and forth by the hands.

"All right, that's enough candids. Now everyone stand in a line and look at me," the young woman coached from behind the camera. "Smile! That was great. I'm going to do one more, because we got a few blinks in that last one. Smile! Oh, perfect."

The group crowded around the young woman to see the photos.

"I like that one," Jay commented, standing on his tiptoes to point at one of the candids, the one which had Kai and Cole laughing, leaning against each other, Cole's free arm slung around Kai's shoulder; Wu and Lloyd holding Ghost's hands, getting ready to swing him; and Jay himself with his hands clutched around the plush toolbox, smiling up at Nya with her smiling back down at him.

"Well, I like the standing-in-a-line one," Kai countered, never one to agree readily.

"And I like the first one, where we're all just standing around looking like idiots," Cole joked. "So which one are we going to get?"

"If you want, you can get all of them," the young woman offered. "It's two tickets per photo, but you can get as many photos as you want as long as you pay two tickets per photo."

"We'll get the first two the boys pointed out. May we see the backgrounds now?" Wu inquired.

"Sure thing," the woman responded. She moved over to the computer and pulled up the two photos Wu mentioned. "You can get this background that just says 'Mega Monster Amusement Park', you can get this one where it looks like you're standing under the main sign that says 'Mega Monster Amusement Park', you can get this one which has the whole amusement park in the background, you can get this one with the sky as your backdrop, you can get-"

"I think we will take the one that has us under the sign for the standing-in-a-line one and the one that has the whole amusement park for the candid one," Wu interjected.

The young woman nodded and clicked a few things on the computer screen. "Got it. Aaand here we go! They're printing."

She stuck her hand into a slot, pulled out two shiny photographs, and popped the photos into a packet. Holding them out to Wu, she added, "Four tickets, please."

"I got it!" Kai announced, tearing off four tickets from his large roll and sticking them up in front of the woman.

"Thank you and here you are," the young woman said graciously, accepting the tickets from Kai and placing the packet in Wu's waiting arms.

"Thank you," Wu called back as the group left the Fun Fotos Fast booth.

"I liked that a lot. Now w-we've got a, um, a souvenir? Is that the word?" Jay asked.

Lloyd nodded. "You got it in one."

"I think I am going to go put these photos back on the Bounty so we don't lose them," Wu commented before asking Jay, "May I take that toolbox as well?"

Jay glanced at Nya. When she nodded, he nodded, and he let Wu take the plush toolbox.

"I will be back in a few minutes," Wu explained.

"We'll just be wandering around," Nya responded. "Meet you in front of the bumper cars?"

"Sounds good," Wu called over his shoulder as he headed out.

"See you in a few!" Jay, Cole, and Kai all called out to him.

Wu just waved goodbye.

"We should figure out what to do next while we walk," Nya figured as they began heading for the bumper cars.

"I want to do the ferris wheel," Cole volunteered.

"Me too, but only if I get to look out and pretend I'm flying," Kai said quickly.

"I'll go with you, and I know my uncle will want to go on it as well. Ghost, want to try the ferris wheel?" Lloyd asked.

Ghost gave a reserved nod.

"What about you, Storm? You and I can go on the ferris wheel too, or we can do something different," Nya put forward.

Jay's eyes caught on a certain attraction. "You and m-me should do the roller-coaster!"

Nya stopped walking.

Caught off-guard, Kai bumped into her. "Hey! What's up?"

"Nothing, nothing," Nya said hurriedly. She swallowed audibly.

"I don't think it's nothing," Cole said warily. "Nya, what's wrong?"

"This is just one of those things where I can't tell you what's going on," Nya said, her voice sounding rough.

"Can you tell me?" Lloyd asked.

"I guess, but we shouldn't leave the boys alone," Nya fumbled.

Lloyd eyed Cole, Kai, Jay, and Ghost, then he turned and looked around. Pointing at a noodle house, he suggested, "Let's step in here. The boys can sit at a booth where nothing will happen to them and where they'll have each other, and we can find somewhere to talk."

"Okay," Nya said hesitantly.

So they stepped into the noodle house, and dodging a pair of chit-chatting waitresses, they headed for a booth.

"You four stay here," Lloyd directed Jay, Ghost, Kai, and Cole once the four boys were seated. "Nya, how about we step right over here, right behind that screen panel? It's far enough away that the boys won't have to hear us."

Nya nodded and led Lloyd behind the painted screen panel.

Jay picked up a menu lying on the table, glancing at the pictures of the Three Ingredient Sizzling Rice and Puffy Potstickers before putting the menu back down and looking up.

Kai was leaning across the table.

"W-what are you doing?" Jay wondered.

Kai motioned for his three brothers to lean in, and they did so. Kai whispered, "I think we should go listen in."

"Eavesdrop on Miss Nya and Mister Lloyd?" Cole whispered back.

"I'm worried about my sister, and Mister Lloyd was obviously worried too. They think we're too young to know what made her upset, but we're not! We should listen in," Kai said urgently but quietly.

Cole thought that one over. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'm in."

Ghost nodded.

"I'm in too," Jay said quickly, not wanting to be left out.

Nearly silently, the four boys snuck over to the screen panel and pressed up against it.

"I can see how Jay wanting to go on the roller-coaster with you made you think about older him if the last time you went on a roller-coaster was with older him," Lloyd was saying thoughtfully.

"But it's silly, that it would make me so emotional," Nya protested.

Lloyd laughed. "Nya, you haven't gotten emotional the whole time the boys have been young, while I've cried at least four times. I kinda think it's time you let yourself let down emotionally."

"Hey, where's this advice coming from?" Nya teased lightly. "I'm the one who's supposed to give you advice."

"It can't help to reverse roles now and then. I know I've had to get used to reversed roles recently," Lloyd said, his voice sounding oddly wry.

"It's gotta be weird for you, them being so young and you being so old," Nya commented.

"True, but we were going to talk about you dealing with this and not me," Lloyd teased.

"Why not both?" Nya countered. "So long as it's relatively short, we've got to get the boys and meet Wu soon."

"He can wait. Besides, knowing my uncle, he'll probably take his time so that by the time he gets back he knows we'll have decided on what to do next," Lloyd figured. "So. Emotions?"

Jay could just barely hear Nya sigh. "Mostly sad. I just miss them so much. They're here, but not here, and that almost makes it worse than when we didn't know where they were at all."

"I agree. Every time I call them by their weird new names I want to shout their real names, the ones I actually know them by," Lloyd admitted.

"It's weird how it's the little things like that which get to us. I miss all the silly little things having them around used to mean. Cole doodling through meetings. Kai getting overprotective of me. Jay joking around. Zane cooking. So on and so on," Nya stated.

Lloyd laughed, but in a sad way, Jay thought. "It's almost funny, but I keep trying to look up to see their faces instead of down."

"I can't wait for the Tea of Restoration to come in at the tea shop. Part of me is worried it never will and they'll be stuck as kids forever," Nya admitted. She sighed again. "I want them back."

"Me too," Lloyd said fervently.

"We should probably get back to them," Nya stated.

At that, Jay felt a hand wrap around his wrist and tug him away from the screen panel. It was Cole, pulling him back to the booth, where Kai and Ghost were heading as well.

The four boys scurried back into the booth.

"Did you understand any of that?" Kai asked.

Cole shook his head. "Not really. But I did pick up on one thing. We're not who we're supposed to be."

"W-we're supposed to b-be ourselves, b-but different. Wwwe're supposed to know them and have them know us," Jay pointed out. "I don't like that. It m-makes mmme feel… Strange."

"I don't like it either," Kai stated.

Ghost shook his head "no" in agreement that he didn't like it.

"I think we really weren't supposed to overhear that. I kind of wish we hadn't, 'cause now my mind is racing all over the place," Cole admitted.

"Mine too," Kai put forward. "But there's nothing we can do about it."

"Or is there?" Cole wondered. "What if we confront them and ask about it? We can be all, 'sorry we accidentally-on-purpose eavesdropped on you and now we're confused and a little upset so please tell us the truth'."

"They said there wwwere things they couldn't tell us, but that's not good. P-people who care about each other shouldn't have secrets about each other," Jay figured.

"They should tell us what's really going on, why they really know us, why our families are older, why Lord Garmadon had us, why everything is the way it is," Kai stated.

Ghost nodded emphatically.

"Then it's decided. We'll ask for the truth," Cole said a little breathlessly.

Kai and Ghost nodded.

Jay nodded too, but he added, "B-but not right now. Right now is for fun. Wwwe get to be here together, all together, and w-we shouldn't w-waste that. Let's enjoy the rest of our time here."

The other three boys nodded and, as Nya and Lloyd re-approached the booth, they put smiles on their faces and resolved not to think about what they had overheard at least until they had gotten home to the Destiny's Bounty.


	18. But these small hours still remain

**AN: Welcome to the eighteenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" Finally, some answers. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas and Meet the Robinsons, "Time falls away, but these small hours still remain."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Everything Is AWESOME! ft. the Lonely Island" by Tegan and Sara and The Lego Movie, "You know what's awesome? Everything" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, "Didn't mean to make you cry, If I'm not back again this time tomorrow, carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters."**

* * *

"Am I correct in saying that everyone enjoyed Mega Monster Amusement Park?" Wu asked once the Destiny's Bounty was safely in the air.

A chorus of five "yes"s and a nod affirmed the answer to that question.

"All right. What would everyone like to do next?" Wu asked.

"I'm thinking a board game," Nya volunteered.

"Yeah, well, I'm thinking a ball game," Lloyd countered.

"Boys, what do you think?" Wu asked kindly, looking at the four young boys in front of him.

Cole, Kai, Jay, and Zane looked at each other and didn't answer. They seemed to all be thinking the same thing.

Wu frowned slightly. "Midnight? Blood? Storm? Ghost? Are you doing all right?"

He was answered with only awkward shuffling and avoidances of his gaze.

"Clearly, something is bothering the four of you," Wu said slowly. "But if you don't want to talk about it, I won't force you. So you have two options: hold it in or let it out. Personally I think letting it out is always the better choice."

"Well, we want to talk about it, we just aren't sure how or the right way to do so," Cole said slowly.

"We have questions. We have a lot of questions," Kai said bluntly.

"It's jjjust hard to say them in the right w-way," Jay added.

"I would recommend just starting to talk and letting things right themselves," Wu stated.

Cole blew out a long breath. "Yeah. I guess so."

"Basically, we overheard Nya and Mister Lloyd saying some things we weren't supposed to hear them say," Kai put forward, "and now we're really curious and won't take 'no' for an answer."

"That makes it a bit hard to answer honestly if the answer may be 'no'," Wu said lightly.

"Really, we more won't take 'you're too young to hear this' or 'we can't tell you that right now' for answers," Kai corrected himself.

Wu's eyebrows raised even as he valiantly tried to keep a straight face. "Is that so. Well, ask away, and Nya, Lloyd, and I will do our best to give you the truth."

"Why did Lord Garmadon kidnap us?" Cole asked.

"Why are our families older than they should be?" Kai asked.

"W-why do you know us m-more than you should?" Jay asked.

Zane swept his arms in front of him, as if to say "all that and more."

Wu could almost hear Nya's and Lloyd's nervousness behind him. He sighed. "I suppose it is time you heard a certain story."

"We don't want a story, we want answers," Kai objected.

Jay tugged on Kai's sleeve. "I think he's gonna give us the answers in the story, like Lord Garmadon did w-when w-we first mmmet him. Bbbut bbbetter this time, b-because wwwe can trust the story this time."

"Ohhh, okay," Kai allowed. Suddenly, he plopped down on the ground. Leaning forward, he added, "We should sit for the story, 'cause I'm tired from walking all over Mega Monster Amusement Park."

"You're not kidding anyone, you ran all over Mega Monster Amusement Park," Nya teased even as she followed her little big brother's prompt and sat.

Kai shrugged. "After we were there for a while, I got excited. You can't blame me, it was awesome there."

"That it was," Nya agreed.

Once everyone was seated, Wu began. "Once there was a man who had a great responsibility. He had to protect the world."

"From w-what?" Jay interjected.

"From his brother who craved destruction. From evils that sought to harm. From anyone and anything that threatened his world, a world called Ninjago," Wu explained.

"So, our world," Kai corrected.

"You guys, stop talking," Cole scolded. "I wanna hear the story."

"To protect Ninjago, the man took apprentices, that is, he took in students who would help him defend the world. These students had special powers, unusual powers, elemental powers. Elements are things that make up other things," Wu described.

"W-we know that. Earth, fire, lightning, and ice are the b-big ones. And wwwe know that wwwe're supposed to have those p-powers eventually," Jay put forward.

Wu blinked. "Okay. Good. I'm glad."

"The students had elemental powers," Lloyd prompted softly. Wu could tell his nephew knew where this story was going and could tell that Lloyd was bracing himself for the end.

"Yes, the students had elemental powers. The man trained them and took them in and taught them all he could. They were ninja, and they were good at what they did. They fought and won many battles, but one day a battle came that they didn't win. Four of the man's students were separated from him and his other two students," Wu said softly.

"Aw, sad," Kai protested.

"It was sad," Wu acknowledged. "So the man and his two remaining students searched and searched, but they couldn't find the missing four. They suspected the man's brother, the one who craved destruction, had taken the four students, as they had been fighting him when they vanished so mysteriously. One day, the man and his two students who were left managed to send a message to the man's brother. The man and his brother were to meet, and if the brother happened to have the four missing students, he was to bring them along. The time for the meeting came. The man went alone."

"Did the brother show up?" Cole asked.

"I thought you didn't want us to interrupt," Kai teased.

"Shush, I wanna know," Cole hushed.

"The brother did show up," Wu answered. "And he had the four missing students with him. The students ran to the man and the brother got left behind."

"So there's a happy ending?" Jay questioned. "I really hope that's the happy ending."

Wu smiled sadly. "Not yet. The students were different. The brother had changed them. Instead of ninja, the students were children."

Four little mouths hung open as the boys absorbed the message.

"So the man and his two remaining students took the children in and cared for them as best they could, in the hopes that one day the children could be turned into their old selves again via a special pair of teas. The man didn't tell the children the truth; how could he? He needed to earn their trust first before they would ever believe him. Bu one day the children asked for the truth, and whether they would believe him or not, he knew he needed to tell it to them," Wu finished quietly.

"We're the ninja," Kai breathed. "Whoa."

"That's almost unbelievable," Cole admitted. "But I do believe it."

"So that's w-why our families look older. They didn't get old, wwwe got young," Jay put together.

"And Lord Garmadon took us 'cause we were his enemies. But why did he turn us into kids?" Cole wondered.

"Our best guess is that he wanted you to not bother him anymore, and instead he would have you on his side," Nya put forward.

"And it can't have helped that he was probably missing me," Lloyd said, his voice quavering as he tried to hold it together.

Kai wrinkled up his face. "Why would he miss you? You're his enemy. You fight him. You're the good guy and he's the bad guy. You're-"

"If you haven't put together, Sensei Wu is my uncle," Lloyd said patiently.

"So?" Kai tossed out there.

"Which means I'm Lord Garmadon's son," Lloyd pointed out.

Kai's eyes went round. "Ohhh. ...Well, I guess that's something we kind of have in common. Me, Midnight, Storm, and Ghost are his sons too, or we used to be. I don't think we are now."

"Which is pretty sad. But you're probably more sad then we are," Cole summed up, rather sensitively, Wu thought.

Lloyd smiled sadly. "Maybe, Midnight."

Cole looked thoughtful. After a pause, he stated. "I think you shouldn't call me that. I think- I think it's best if you call me Cole again. I'm ready."

"If you're Cole, then I'm Kai," Kai put forward.

"And I'm J-j-jay, but w-without the extra jjj's," Jay added.

"What about you, Ghost? Are you ready to be Zane?" Wu asked.

The littlest boy hesitated, then he shook his head "no." He almost looked like he was ready to cry.

"That's okay. You have plenty of time," Wu soothed lightly. "After all, you probably don't remember being Zane any time before, do you?"

Zane shook his head "no" again.

"Why is that?" Kai wondered. "All the rest of us remember our lives, why doesn't Ghost?"

"I think that should be a topic for another day," Wu stated quickly. He really didn't want the other three boys to have bad reactions to their youngest brother.

"You said you'd tell us the truth about us, why is the truth about Ghost any different?" Cole countered. "Besides, I'm sure Ghost wants to know too. I know I wouldn't want to live not knowing why I'm different."

Ghost nodded his head.

"If you're sure, Ghost," Wu said hesitantly. He thought about it for a moment. "What's the best way to phrase this…"

"How about directly?" Nya suggested.

"If you think that would be best, go ahead with it," Wu allowed.

Nay shrugged and turned to the four boys. Face straight, she said simply, "Ghost is a robot."

The four boys were silent.

"No way!" Jay shrieked.

Kai shook his head.

"That's- that's just-" Cole began, then began again, trying to find the words.

Wu waited tensely, waiting to see if the boys would accept each other the way they had the first time they met, the way they had the first time they found secrets out about each other, the way they evidently had when they had re-met as children.

"That's awesome," Cole said finally, sincerely.

Kai was shaking his head in amazement.

"Like, a robot-robot? That's so cool!" Jay squealed, turning to Zane and gently shaking the smaller boy by his shoulders. "Ghost! That's amazing! You're amazing!"

Zane slowly started to smile.

"Are there any other questions you have?" Wu asked, glad to have gotten that over with and to have it go so well.

"Now that we know what's really up, can we go stay with our parents?" Cole ventured, then hurriedly added, "It's not like I don't enjoy being here, 'cause I really do, but I miss my dad, and my house, and my bed, and my everything."

"You must remember, we don't know what Lord Garmadon is up to right now," Wu cautioned. "He may still try to get you boys back, and if that's the case-"

"Then we'd be a lot better off together and with people trained in ninja skills than separated and with our parents," Cole finished, shoulders slumping slightly. But then he brightened. "Can our parents come visit us again?"

"Definitely," Wu agreed warmly. "In fact, if you will allow one of us to come with in case of an attack from Lord Garmadon or the Serpentine, you can go visit them yourself as soon as I can get it all set up with each parent."

Cole smiled. "I'd like that a lot."

"Any more questions?" Lloyd wondered.

Jay shot a hand into the air.

"Yes, Jay?" Wu called on him.

"Can w-we learn how to b-be ninja?" Jay asked excitedly.

Wu thought about that one for a moment. "Well, I'd prefer if children didn't actively engage in fighting, but you could learn some of the skills that ninja use and train via."

Jay fist-pumped with both hands. "Yes! I w-wouldn't have guessed it, b-but I mmmiss training."

"What skills?" Cole asked eagerly in response to Wu's answer, sitting up straighter than before.

"Strategy, meditation, stealth, espionage, sparring, and so," Wu answered.

"Espionage? That means spying!" Kai squealed.

"Oh, now you've got Kai's attention," Nya laughed. "I had almost forgotten how much you were into spies."

"Can we start training now?" Kai begged.

"If there are no further questions," Wu started, letting his voice trail off when it was evident the boys had nothing to say and they were only interested in the prospect of training. "Very well. We can do a little training."

Kai jumped into a standing position and threw his hands in the air eagerly. "Let's do it!"


	19. Trying to put the pieces together

**AN: Welcome to the nineteenth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" I love Nya's POV so that makes a reappearance this chapter (maybe sometime soon I'll write something completely about her). The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Free to be Me" by Francesca Battistelli, "Trying to put the pieces together, but perfection is my enemy." The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Unbelievable ft. Hanson" by Owl City, "This is as good as it gets, it's unbelievable, you haven't seen nothing yet" and "Hurt" by Christina Aguilera, "Would you tell me I was wrong? Would you help me understand? Are you looking down upon me? Are you proud of who I am?"**

* * *

"Are Cole and Mister Lloyd back now?" Kai asked exasperatedly.

"For the thirteenth time, no, they're not," Nya said, trying not to sound impatient with her brother and failing.

Kai groaned loudly, draping himself across his bed. "It's been hours since they were supposed to be back! What's keeping them?"

"Do you think they got attacked on the way b-back?" Jay wondered fearfully, standing up from where he had been playing action figures with Zane.

Nya blew out a long breath, unsure whether to be annoyed or amused. "Okay, first of all, it's only ten minutes since when they were supposed to return, so we don't have to worry about them being attacked just yet. Secondly, be patient, Kai. Third, this is only the third time Cole's seen his father since he thought his dad was dead. You can't blame him if he wants to stay as long as possible and just maybe delays leaving."

"Three times? I thought it was two," Kai thought out loud.

"This time, the last time he visited his dad, and when his dad visited us along with Jay's parents," Nya listed off.

"Ohhh, I forgot that time his dad visited us," Kai stated.

Jay frowned. "P-poor Cole. It's kinda sad he doesn't get to see his dad as m-much as I get to see mmmy mmmom and dad. I've visited home four times, practically every day, and he's only gotten b-back twice. Ppplus, my visits are always longer than his, 'cause his dad's always busy."

"Yeah, and I get to see Nya all the time, which is longer than you get to see your family. So what?" Kai questioned. He switched around which way he was lying on his bed, probably so he could see Jay better.

"So wwwe should let him pppick what we do when he does get b-back. Wwwe've got a long time until dinner, he can choose how w-we spend that time," Jay answered.

Zane nodded in affirmation.

"That's a sweet thought, Jay. Let's do that," Nya approved.

Kai groaned again, but he was smiling. "Whatever. At least Cole picks good games."

"Thanks!" Cole's voice chirped. A second later, Cole appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, Lloyd a step behind him.

"Cole's bbback!" Jay cheered.

"Finally," Kai muttered.

"Hey, sorry we're late," Lloyd greeted them. "I lost track of time, then Cole took a while to say goodbye."

Cole shrugged and nodded, unashamed. "What were you guys just talking about? I heard Kai's compliment, but nothing before that."

"We think you should pppick the game we p-play b-before dinner, 'cause w-we're sad you don't get to see your dad as much as I get to see my p-parents and Kai sees Nya," Jay explained.

Cole blinked. "Well, in that case, Ghost should pick the game. He never gets to see his family."

"...That's fair," Jay allowed.

"But unless we want to play a round of yes-or-no questions for like a quarter of an hour, we're not gonna know what game Ghost wants to play, 'cause he's not exactly gonna speak up and tell us," Kai pointed out. "So you should pick, Cole."

"Honestly, what I want to do is hear more about our older selves," Cole admitted. "I'm really curious."

"What about?" Nya asked.

"Like, is my favorite color still orange? Does Jay still stutter? How much does Ghost talk? Did Kai get over his spy obsession? What are our favorite things to do?" Cole listed off. He threw his hands in the air. "So many questions!"

"I've got some too," Kai put forth.

"Mmme too," Jay affirmed.

"If you guys want, we can just sit and talk about your futures, or our past-slash-present," Nya volunteered.

Jay clapped his hands excitedly and dropped into a sitting position. "Yes, p-please!"

"What question do you want us to answer first?" Lloyd asked.

"Answer one of Cole's, then one of mine, then one of Jay's, then one of Cole's, then one of mine, then one of Jay's, and so on," Kai ordered, sitting up on his bed.

Nya laughed. "Okay, mister bossy-pants. Cole, what question do you want answered first?"

"What's older-me's favorite color?" Cole demanded, bouncing slightly in place.

Nya's eyebrows furrowed without her willing them to do so. "I- I actually don't know. When you get older, you don't ask people's favorite colors as often."

"Sad," Kai muttered.

"If I had to guess, I'd go black, or maybe brown. I know his ninja suit is black, but I don't know if he chose it," Nya pondered.

"I'd guess Sensei Wu chooses them," Lloyd chimed in. He gestured at his outfit. "I know that I didn't pick green."

"What would you have picked, if you had a choice?" Nya wondered.

Lloyd shrugged and chuckled a little. "I don't know, maybe I still would've gone with green."

"I'm not sure how I feel about black," Cole mused, getting them back on topic.

"W-what's my ninja suit color?" Jay questioned.

"And mine? Oh, and Ghost's?" Kai added.

"Jay, yours is blue, and Kai, yours is red, while Ghost's is white," Nya answered.

"So, basically the fight suits that Lord Garmadon gave us," Kai summed up.

"Basically," Nya agreed, then she thought it over more thoroughly. "In fact, almost exactly. Your fight suits looked incredibly similar to your ninja suits. I wonder..."

"My turn to ask a question," Kai reminded before she could get lost in thought. "I wanna know, does Ghost ever talk?"

"That was one of my questions," Cole pointed out.

"Get over it," Kai dismissed.

"Yes, he does. I'd say he's a little on the quieter side, but he definitely speaks way more than he does now," Lloyd answered.

"That's gonna be so weird, when we eventually get older and Ghost figures out how to talk," Kai judged.

"Get over it," Cole shot back, obviously proud of himself for that turn-around.

Kai stuck his tongue out at Cole.

"Ooo, ooo! M-my turn! W-what are our favorite activities?" Jay asked, waving his hand in the air but blurting his question before Nya could call on him.

"That was also one of my questions," Cole pointed out again.

"It's a good question," Jay said, unperturbed.

Nya put a hand to her chin. "Let's see. Jay, when you're older you love tinkering. You make and fix all sorts of gadgets, and you and I are in charge of keeping the Destiny's Bounty in working condition. You're also a big fan of comic books, and video games, and movies and TV shows, but mostly messing around with mechanical things."

Jay nodded, looking pleased with that answer.

"Older Cole likes working out a lot, like, a lot a lot," Lloyd laughed. He shook his head. "It's a no wonder he's so strong."

"I'm strong?" Cole asked, looking deeply in awe of his older self.

"Very," Lloyd affirmed, tussling Cole's hair.

Cole fist-pumped the air in excitement.

"What about me?" Kai demanded, sitting up straighter and looking, Nya thought, like he was about to jump off the bed if he didn't get an answer soon.

"You like a lot of things, but you really like annoying me," Nya teased.

"Some things never change," Kai teased back.

A laugh startled its way out of Nya, and for a moment she could almost see her older brother older again.

"But really, what do I like to do?" Kai asked.

"Mostly, you just like hanging out with your ninja 'brothers'. Whatever they're doing, you'll do, not without complaining, but you'll do it," Nya answered.

"Wait, wait, wait. We call ourselves brothers when we're older too?" Cole stated.

Nya nodded.

Jay let out an excited squeal. "Guys! W-we're b-brothers! I mmmean, I already knew that, bbbut wwwe're always gonna b-be b-b-bbb-bb-b-"

"Brothers," Kai supplied when Jay's voice trailed off in a sputter of "b."

Jay gestured wildly but happily at Kai. "Yeah! That!"

Cole wrapped an arm around Jay's shoulders. "That's awesome. That's really awesome."

Zane just smiled a huge smile.

"What about Ghost?" Cole wondered, bringing the topic back once again to the subject of favorite things to do.

"Ghost, you like a lot of things. You like meditating, and cooking, and helping other people," Lloyd said directly to Zane, who looked shyly at his own feet. "If I could only say one thing, though, it'd be cooking, because that kind of combines everything."

"Ooo, ooo!" Jay said again, jumping up.

"'Ooo, ooo' what?" Kai asked.

"An idea! Wwwe should try the things w-we like w-when w-we're bbbig," Jay suggested, clapping his hands together excitedly.

"Like, I exercise, and you play with gears, and Ghost cooks and Kai does whatever the rest of us are doing?" Cole wondered.

Jay nodded enthusiastically.

Cole shrugged. "Sure. I switch my game choice from talking to doing that. But only if we can do it in a way where we're not all off on our own doing stuff. Like, we should pair up or something."

"I'll stay with Ghost. I wanna cook," Kai announced.

"You j-just wwwanna steal pieces of food w-when the grown-ups aren't looking," Jay teased.

Kai bobbed his head "yes" unashamedly.

"All right, we can do that. Lloyd, do you want to take Cole out on the deck and teach him a couple of training moves? Oh, and take Jay with you?" Nya asked. "I'll take Kai and Ghost to the kitchen to help Sensei Wu with supper, then I'll grab some of my scraps and tools and join you guys on the deck so that Jay and I can mess around with mechanics while you and Cole train and we don't all have to be separate."

Lloyd nodded in confirmation. "C'mon, Jay, Cole, let's go."

The oldest and third oldest of the small boys followed Lloyd out the door toward the deck.

"See you in a few!" Kai called after them.

"See you in a few!" Cole's and Jay's voices repeated back.

Nya looked at Kai and Zane. "You two ready to get cooking?"

Kai nodded and hopped off his bed, running to the door and looking back impatiently.

Zane shrugged, but he followed Kai to the door.

"Okay, I'm coming," Nya laughed at the urgent look on her little big brother's face.

The trio walked to the kitchen and peeked through the door.

"Sensei?" Nya called when she didn't immediately see Wu. She stepped in and looked around for a moment.

Seconds later, Wu walked in through the door leading to the dining room. "Yes, Nya?"

"Oh good. You had me worried for a second there," Nya confessed.

"About what?" Sensei Wu questioned. When Nya didn't answer immediately, he turned, smiling warmly at Kai and Zane. "Hello, boys. Supper isn't ready yet, I've barely even started."

"We're here to help with that. Or, Ghost's here to help, I'm here to sample the food and also help just a little," Kai corrected truthfully.

Sensei Wu laughed. "Is that so? Well, I am planning on making pizza pockets. Do you think you can handle that?"

"We can totally handle that," Kai affirmed.

"Do you know what pizza pockets are?" Nya asked.

"Nope," Kai said brightly, walking to the counter and peering at the supplies already waiting there.

"Why don't you start by reading the recipe to Ghost, so you two know what you are getting into?" Wu suggested.

Kai nodded and picked up a sheet of paper. "Is this it?"

"That is correct. Ghost, why don't you go over by Kai and listen to the recipe?" Sensei Wu instructed.

Looking unsure, Zane went to stand by Kai. The smallest boy glanced back over his shoulder at Wu and Nya, eyes full of unspoken questions.

"Go on, you two. Nya and I are just going to step into the dining room for a moment," Wu encouraged, making shooing motions with his hands.

Not entirely sure what was going on but trusting her sensei, Nya began walking into the dining room. Wu followed her.

Zane watched them go even as Kai began reading through the recipe, sounding it out word by word.

"What?" Nya asked Sensei Wu once he had closed the doors to the dining room behind them.

"You are worried. You were concerned when I wasn't where you expected me to be, and you didn't want to say why in front of the boys," Wu observed shrewdly.

"A little," Nya admitted with a sigh. "It's just- we haven't heard anything from or about Lord Garmadon or the Serpentine since we got the boys back. It makes you think, you know? What are they up to? What are they hiding? What are they planning? What can we even do about it without Cole, Kai, Jay, and Zane in fighting condition, and with the fact that they're kids who need to be watched almost around the clock? We're sitting ducks until Mistaké calls us and says she's got that tea back in stock. What do we do?"

"We hold our heads high and continue on," Wu said simply.

Nya blew out a long breath. "Yeah, I know that's what we do in theory, but what about in practice?"

Wu thought about that for a second. "We keep doing what we're doing, caring for the boys and keeping an eye out for trouble, and we do our best not to worry. Worry does not subtract problems from tomorrow; it only adds those problems to today. Then we must deal with them both now and in the future."

"Okay, I guess," Nya said slowly. "But what about Lord Garmadon?"

"You weren't there when the boys chose me over him. He was devastated. I don't think he is in any condition to attack, much less plan any schemes," Wu assured.

"You think so?" Nya wondered. It was almost too much to hope for, but she hoped anyway.

"We may deal with the Serpentine at some point soon, but I do not see Lord Garmadon causing any trouble for us in the near future," Wu said confidently. "Now, I believe Kai and Ghost are waiting for me, and since you didn't say you were here to help as well, I would hazard a guess that you are being waited on as well."

Nya nodded. "Okay. Thanks."

"Any time," Sensei Wu said warmly. He re-opened the doors between the dining room and kitchen and joined Kai and Zane.

"Okay," Nya said in relief almost to herself, mind already turning to what she was going to build as she turned to walk out of the dining room. "I guess we don't have to worry about Lord Garmadon any time soon."


	20. But now that I see you in his arms

**AN: Welcome to the twentieth chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" I'm so excited, because this chapter contains a lot of things you all have been waiting for, including the POV of a main character we have yet to see. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "I Want You Back" by Jackson 5, "But now that I see you in his arms."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Because Of You" by Kelly Clarkson, "I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty, because of you I am afraid"; "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri, "Don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore, you lost the love I loved the most"; and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" by The Phantom of the Opera, "Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye; try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try."**

* * *

Lord Garmadon knew what he had to do, and he did it.

* * *

"In the future, when I say 'it's time to get ready for bed', I mean 'it's time to get ready for bed', not 'it's time to sneak out and eat the cake Sensei Wu and Nya just baked five minutes ago'," Lloyd sighed. "Seriously?"

Zane looked like he was going to cry. Cole looked mildly repentant, or at least he was trying to look repentant, but it was spoiled by the fact that he also looked incredibly satisfied. Kai and Jay didn't look ashamed of themselves in the least, and as Lloyd turned away from them, he saw out of the corner of his eye Kai offer a fist-bump and Jay happily accept.

"I saw that," Lloyd scolded, turning back to them. "This isn't something to be happy about. Wu and Nya worked really hard on that cake. They-"

Cole burped.

Kai and Jay absolutely lost it, howling with laughter, and after a moment, Cole and Zane joined them in giggling hysterically.

The corner of Lloyd's mouth twitched against his direct orders to it not to move. "Okay, yeah, ha ha. But do you want to see Sensei Wu and Nya be sad?"

That sobered the four young boys up pretty quickly.

"Is that what you want, to make them sad?" Lloyd continued, encouraged by the response he was getting. "Because I'm pretty sure that's what happened."

Actually, he was pretty sure the reason Nya was crying was that the boys had looked so funny covered in cake and alarmed by the fact that they were caught that she had stifled her laughter so hard tears came out of her eyes, and the reason Wu looked so solemn is that he had wanted some of the cake for himself. But kids had to know that there were consequences, and okay, maybe some of the consequences were faked this time, but they wouldn't always be.

"We're sorry," Cole said meekly. He burped again, but this time he covered his mouth.

"Really, really sorry," Kai added.

"Extra super really, really sorry," Jay put forward.

Zane still looked like he was going to cry, and now Cole, Kai, and Jay looked like they were about to join him.

"I forgive you," Lloyd said quickly, trying to head the tears off at the pass. "And I'm sure Sensei and Nya will forgive you too."

"Can you go get them? So w-we can apologize?" Jay asked.

"I think you boys should get cleaned up first. You've got crumbs all over your faces and hands and frosting all down your clothes. Grab your pajamas, you can each take turns getting cleaned up in the bathroom and change in there. Then I'll get Sensei Wu and Nya, calm them down, help them finish cleaning up the mess that got left from the cake, and bring them back in here to you for you four to apologize to them," Lloyd instructed.

The four boys nodded, then they scrambled toward their dressers in search of pajamas.

"Wwwhere are my rocketship p-pajamas?" Jay wondered, rummaging through his pajama drawer.

"I think they're being washed. You should wear your plaid ones instead," Cole put forward. He picked up a set of pajamas printed with trains on the pants and a train station on the shirt, scrutinized them closely, then said, "Yup, I'm wearing these tonight."

"B-b-but I like the rocketship ones," Jay complained. He pouted at Lloyd pleadingly.

"Pretty sure Cole's right and they're in the wash. You can wear them tomorrow night," Lloyd said.

"Awww, fine," Jay grouched.

"Stop talking and let's get a move on," Kai called. He was already standing by the door, his monkey-printed pajamas tucked under one arm.

"Ghost, need any help?" Lloyd asked.

The littlest boy was having some trouble maneuvering his star-covered pajama top and bottom, which were made out of a very soft but slippery material of which Lloyd couldn't remember the name. Every time he picked up the shirt, the pants would fall out of his grasp, and every time he stooped to grab the pants, the shirt would take a dive to the floor.

Zane tried one more time to pick up both top and bottom, and he successfully wrapped his arms around the pajama shirt and pants. He grinned up at Lloyd, obviously proud of himself.

"Good job," Lloyd stated. He looked around. Zane had finally picked up his pajamas without dropping either part. Jay was shutting his dresser drawer, plaid pajamas in his hands and a pout still on his face. Kai was still at the door, tapping his foot impatiently on the floor. Cole had joined him and was leaning against the doorframe. "All right, let's head to the bathroom."

* * *

Ghost was not sure what to do with himself.

He had been given first use of the bathroom after Midnight, Blood, and Storm has argued for five minutes over the order in which they should go, at which point Mister Lloyd got tired of the argument and stated that they were going in reverse age order. Ghost had gotten all the cake crumbs cleaned off of his face and clothes, and he had put on his pajamas.

"Head back to you guys' bedroom and wait for the rest of us," Mister Lloyd had told him once Ghost had emerged from the bathroom.

So now Ghost was waiting in the bedroom. He had put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket. He had turned down his bedclothes. He had even turned off the lights in preparation for bedtime, reconsidered, and turned the lights back on. After all, once his three brothers were clean and had returned to the bedroom, Mister Lloyd was going to go get Miss Nya and Sensei Wu so that Ghost and his brothers could apologize.

Ghost felt really bad about eating the cake before they were supposed to do so. He had not meant to make Miss Nya cry and Sensei Wu go quiet. He knew his brothers felt just as bad, or at least he figured they did. Ghost could barely wait to apologize. But he had to wait.

Ghost puffed out his cheeks then let all the air out. What to do, what to do, what to do in the meantime. Storm was not there, so Ghost was unable to resume playing action figures with him. Blood was also not there, so Ghost was unable to play cars with him. Midnight was not there, so Ghost was unable to play at wrestling with him. All three of them were not there, so Ghost would not be playing that fun "monkey in the middle" game.

Oh well. Ghost shrugged. He could entertain himself. There were drawing materials, there were books, and there were-

A noise sounded outside the window. Ghost's head whipped around and he stared at the window. Something was out there.

A dark shadow moved across the window.

Unsure of what to do, Ghost backed up, away from the window. His back bumped into something and he turned.

The closet doors were open.

Struck by inspiration, Ghost leapt into the closet and shut the doors almost all the way behind him. He left them open just enough that he could see out. And what a sight he saw!

First the window slid open, bit by tiny bit. A hand reached through and rolled the window all the way open. Another hand joined it, then another, then another. A head followed the hands through the now-open window, then a torso, then legs. The figure looked up and Ghost saw their face, but he didn't need to see that face to know who the intruder was. He would have known that person anywhere. It was his dad.

* * *

Lord Garmadon stretched, opening his four arms wide. It hadn't been easy for him to squeeze through that window like that. He wasn't as young as he used to be.

He looked around. The bedroom was empty, just like he had thought.

He reached back through the window with two of his arms and retrieved the Megaweapon and a short rope from the small aircraft he had borrowed (okay, stolen) from the Serpentine's collection. Using the rope, he tethered the little aircraft to the bedpost nearest to the window.

Satisfied that he would be able to escape as soon as he needed, Lord Garmadon turned his attention to the Megaweapon. He still hadn't decided on what to wish for to get his boys to return to him, but he needed to act before the time the Serpentine had allowed for him to grieve the loss of his boys was up. Should he hypnotize them? Should he disguise himself as Wu? Should he create a monster and save them from it, thereby making them see him as their hero again?

Or maybe he shouldn't use the Megaweapon at all. If he wished for something, he would be too weakened to get his boys home safely.

Quietly, Lord Garmadon thought out loud, "I can't use the Megaweapon to wish for something to help me capture my boys, but I can use it another way."

The sound of footsteps in the hallway outside the door caught his attention. Quickly, he rushed to stand beside the door, flat against the wall.

The door swung open, shielding him from view.

In rushed Jay, dressed in plaid pajamas and hair shining with water. He called out, "Ghost! I'm back! What do you want to-"

Lord Garmadon leapt out and hit Jay over the head with the Megaweapon.

The boy crumpled to the ground.

Lord Garmadon hauled Jay backwards, up against the wall beside the door, and seated him there. Then Lord Garmadon settled back in and waited.

A minute or so passed, then more footsteps scurried down the hallway.

Kai ran into the room at full speed.

He wasn't fast enough, however, to evade Lord Garmadon swinging the Megaweapon.

Kai fell down face-first on the floor.

Lord Garmadon picked him up, carried him back to beside the door, and set him next to Jay before leaning against the wall beside his two middle boys.

Another minute passed, and Lord Garmadon heard footsteps, these ones slightly slower.

Cole trotted into the room. He looked around, confused. "Huh. Where-"

Before Cole could finish his sentence, Lord Garmadon smacked him over the head with the Megaweapon.

Cole stood there for a second, then he toppled over.

Lord Garmadon retrieved him and brought him to his brothers. Then Lord Garmadon settled in to await his youngest.

Another minute passed him by, then another minute more went by. No Ghost.

Lord Garmadon grew anxious, then nervous, then flat-out worried. His boys were wearing pajamas. That meant that they were getting ready for bed, and knowing Wu's ways, or at least the ways of "good," that meant that Wu and his students would soon be in to tuck the boys in.

He had a decision to make.

With a heavy heart, Lord Garmadon bid his youngest a silent farewell. He began dragging his boys, first Jay, then Kai, then Cole, over to the window. Once the three of them were there and ready to be placed in his aircraft, he put the Megaweapon on the aircraft. Then he turned and gave the door to the hallway one last look, hoping that Ghost would enter at last.

That door didn't open.

But the closet door did.

* * *

Ghost ran out of the closet, fists up and legs steady. Or at least, he tried.

In reality, as soon as he stepped out of the closet, he stepped on a discarded toy car and slipped. His legs flew out from under him, and he tumbled to the ground.

"Ghost!" His dad exclaimed. The man ran to him and picked him up, brushing him off. "Are you hurt?"

Ghost took several quick steps back and put his fists up again.

"Oh. You saw all that, didn't you?" His dad sighed, putting his upper hands to his forehead. "Listen, your brothers wouldn't have listened to me. I had to do it!"

Ghost took another step back.

His dad spread his arms pleadingly. "Ghost, it's okay. I can't say I know what caused you four to run to Wu, and I don't know if I'll ever know. I know you definitely won't tell me. But it's okay, that's over now. Wu won't get to you anymore. I'm here to take you home."

Home.

Ghost looked at his dad, at the man who named, at the first grown-up face he had ever known.

Then he looked over his shoulder at the wall behind him. There hung a series of photos he knew well, the photos from the day they had gone to Mega Monster Amusement Park. Everyone was laughing or smiling, everyone was well-fed and well-dressed, everyone was there for each other.

Ghost looked back at his dad.

His dad looked back.

Ghost sighed and took a step forward.

His dad spread his arms for a hug.

Ghost opened his mouth.

"Wait, what are you-" his dad began.

"Help!" Ghost screamed. "Mister Wu! Miss Nya! Mister Lloyd! Help!"

He ran for the door, still screaming for help.

Lord Garmadon blocked the way.

* * *

"That was Mistaké," Sensei Wu said, hanging up the phone.

"And? And? And?" Lloyd prompted eagerly.

"Dd I hear you correctly?" Nya begged.

Sensei Wu gave them a huge, relieved smile. "The Tea of Restoration is ready and both it and the Tomorrow's Tea will be waiting for us in the morning."

Lloyd whooped with glee.

Nya's face drained of all of its worry.

"It's over, it's over," Lloyd nearly sang.

Nya sighed. "We're going to be okay."

"Everything worked out in the end," Wu stated.

The three of them stood there for a bit, basking in the moment.

Wu clapped his hands together, breaking the silence. "So. Shall we get back to cleaning up?"

"I think we're done, actually. Nya and I kept cleaning while you were on the phone," Lloyd explained.

"And that means we're ready to go get the boys to bed," Nya figured out.

Lloyd laughed nervously as the trio began walking toward the boys' bedroom. "Yeah, and also for them to apologize to you two. I kinda implied that you were both incredibly sad over them eating the cake before you said they could."

"Lloyd!" Nya scolded.

"I was the only way I could get them to calm down," Lloyd said desperately. "Besides, weren't you two a little sad?"

"Mostly I was just sad I did not get to see them enjoy it," Wu remarked. He chuckled. "And that there was no piece left for me."

"I was actually laughing so hard I was crying, not actually crying," Nya put forward.

"And how was I supposed to know that?" Lloyd teased.

"I don't know, I-" Nya began. She was interrupted by screams.

""Help! Mister Wu! Miss Nya! Mister Lloyd! Help!" A unfamiliar yet familiar voice was yelling.

The three of them froze.

"Was that-" Nya started, but her voice trailed off.

"It sounded like-" Wu tried.

Lloyd put together the pieces. He gasped. "Zane? Oh no. The boys!"

* * *

Lord Garmadon stood in between Ghost and the door.

Ghost faked going for the door one way, then the other way, still screaming for help. "Sensei! Nya! Lloyd! Please!"

Lord Garmadon anticipated his every move.

"Help! It's Lord Garmadon! I need help!" Ghost yelled. He ducked and tried to sprint between Lord Garmadon's legs, but the man reached down and caught him.

Lord Garmadon picked him up under the arms and held him up to eye level. The man whispered, "Why?"

Ghost looked at him and defiantly said nothing.

Their silence was broken by the sound of footsteps running down the hallway just outside.

Lord Garmadon set Ghost down surprisingly gently. The man ran for the window and scrambled out. He called back in as he flew away, "This isn't over! This isn't the end!"

Just as Lord Garmadon flew out of sight, Wu, Nya, and Lloyd burst into the bedroom.

"Ghost! Are you okay?" Nya gasped, rushing to kneel before him.

"Uh-huh. But I don't know about my brothers," Ghost said, almost shocked to hear his own voice now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

"What happened to them?" Lloyd asked, going to Storm's side as he was the closest to the door. He picked the third-oldest boy up and cradled him.

Wu picked up Midnight, and Nya went over and picked up Blood.

"Lord Garmadon hit them over the heads with the Megaweapon," Ghost said helplessly. Against his will, his eyes were filling with tears. "Are they-"

"They are okay," Sensei Wu said quickly. "I believe they're just knocked out. They should wake up soon."

"Man, what just happened?" Lloyd asked the room at large.

"Lord Garmadon wanted us back. I believe he thought Sensei Wu somehow tricked us into going with him and if Lord Garmadon took us back, we could be convinced back to his side," Ghost explained, shaking his head.

"Wow," Lloyd whispered. He shook his head too.

"I can't believe everyone is going to be okay. I was so scared," Nya fretted.

"Me too," Lloyd said fervently.

"As was I," Wu added.

Storm groaned, probably not in agreement given he had been knocked out before he had even seen Lord Garmadon. He opened his eyes. "W-what just hit me?"

"Lord Garmadon and the Megaweapon," Lloyd supplied helpfully.

"Really?" Storm wondered. He squirmed. "Can I get down?"

Lloyd set him down.

Storm wobbled slightly, then he stood firmly. "Who stopped him?"

"Ghost did," Nya said, her voice filled with what almost sounded like pride.

"Cool," Storm approved. He raised his hand in a fist, and Ghost, recognizing what his brother was trying to do, bumped it with his own fist.

"Nya? What's goin' on?" Blood said groggily, raising his head from his sister's arms.

"Hey, bro. Lord Garmadon came by and knocked you, Cole, and Jay out, and Ghost chased him away," Nya summed up.

"Huh. Well, that's awesome, but it would've been awesomer if I hadn't been too unconscious to see it," Blood stated, squirming until Nya let him stand on his own.

"I don't think 'awesomer' is a word," Lloyd pointed out.

Blood scoffed. "Fight me on it, Lloyd."

"No fighting, we'll get in trouble," Midnight said reasonably, if slightly weakly as he peered down from Sensei Wu's grasp.

"Yeah, well, Ghost just fought Lord Garmadon, and he's not in trouble," Blood pointed out, then he thought for a moment. "Well, but he was protecting us, so I guess he gets away with it."

"Ghost did what?" Midnight asked. He wriggled out of Wu's arms to the ground and took a few steps toward Ghost.

"I stopped Lord Garmadon from kidnapping you three," Ghost stated.

The reaction he got was incredible. Midnight, Blood, and Storm leapt back with looks of shock and surprise dominating their features. Nya made a choked sound that was probably a stifled laugh. Lloyd did not even try to stop his own giggle.

"Ghost. B-buddy. Did you j-just… Talk?" Storm asked in amazement.

"Yeah," Ghost said simply.

"I didn't know you could talk," Blood marvelled.

"Neither did I," Ghost admitted. "But I had to try. Lord Garmadon- he was going to-"

"It's okay," Nya cut in. She turned to his brothers. "Lord Garmadon was trying to kidnap you boys back. Ghost saw him knock you three out with the Megaweapon and yelled for help, and I guess Lord Garmadon fled."

Gratefully, Ghost nodded. It was hard enough talking a little, he did not know if he could go through the whole explanation again, not to mention the tears were finally starting to slip out in the realization of what had just almost happened. He definitely could not cry and talk at the same time, that would be far too difficult.

"Hey, Ghost, it's okay," Lloyd comforted, seeing Ghost's tears and coming up to him. "Lord Garmadon isn't going to get you. And whenever you next see him, you can make sure of that, because you'll be able to fight back."

"Huh?" Storm voiced.

"Oh man, in all the rush we haven't told you yet!" Lloyd exclaimed.

"We received a call. The tea that we need to turn you back into your old selves has come in. Tomorrow, you will be returned to your former states and you will be able to defend yourselves whenever you next cross paths with Lord Garmadon."

"So everything's okay," Nya stated. "The threat of Lord Garmadon doesn't matter anymore. It's over. It's the end."

"No," Ghost said thoughtfully. Everyone turned to him. He swallowed hard and gathered up the strength to say what he wanted to say. "It is the beginning."


	21. I had the time of my life with you

**AN: Welcome to the twenty-first chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" All that's left after this one is a single chapter; I'm so sad but so proud. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Long Live" by Taylor Swift, "I had the time of my life with you."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "O-O-H Child" by The Five Stairsteps and The Guardians of the Galaxy, "Some day, yeah, we'll put it together and we'll get it all done"; "Entertaining Angels" by Newsboys, "One to another, do you remember me? I feel so small, are you listening"; and "Wake Me Up" by Avicii, "Wake me up when it's all over, when I'm wiser and I'm older, all this time I was finding myself and I didn't know I was lost."**

* * *

Nya held the stack of clothes out to the four boys. "These are some of your favorite casual clothes when you're older. Hoodies, sweatpants, t-shirts… They won't fit you now, of course."

"But they will fit us in a few minutes," Cole figured out, looking up at Nya thoughtfully. He took the clothes and looked at them. "Whose is whose?"

"Cole, you have the black pants, black hoodie, and dark gray shirt. Kai, you have the red hoodie, maroon sweatpants, and red and yellow shirt. Jay has the white shirt and blue hoodie and pants, and Ghost has the light gray shirt and white hoodie and pants. If all else fails, they're in age order," Nya explained. "I'm gonna go see if the teas are ready to be combined yet."

She headed out the door of the bedroom, closing it behind her. Walking down the halls, Nya tried desperately to rein in her thoughts of "what ifs." What if the teas didn't work? What if only one of the teas worked and the boys were stuck as children in teenage bodies or teenagers in child bodies? What if the teas only worked for one or two or three of the boys and one or more of them was left out? What if-

"Hush, brain," Nya said out loud. "Worries don't subtract from tomorrow's troubles, they only add to today's."

Somewhat, although not completely, satisfied with that, Nya turned the corner and entered the kitchen. "How's it going, Sensei?"

"Very well. The teas have been brewed and Lloyd is mixing them right now," Sensei Wu answered her, pointing to Lloyd, who was stirring a steaming bowl of what had to be the combination of Tomorrow's Tea and the Tea of Restoration with a ladle.

Lloyd didn't look up, so intent was he on his task.

"Looks good. All we have to do now is get out four cups and pour the teas in, and have the boys drink it, of course," Nya noted.

Sensei gestured at a tray sitting on the counter, where four pristine cups stood waiting. "Cups, check."

"Tea ready to be poured in, check," Lloyd added. He walked over and gingerly began ladling the teas into the cups, portioning the mixture out evenly until there was none left.

"I'll carry the tray in. Would you go get the boys?" Nya asked Lloyd.

Lloyd shrugged and nodded, leaving the kitchen for the boys' bedroom.

Hefting the tray with the four cups ever-so-carefully, Nya headed into the dining room. She set the tray down gingerly and put out the cups slowly, very slowly, not wanting to spill a single precious drop of the teas.

She stood back and sighed. "This is going to work. I know it will."

"Of course it will," Lloyd's voice chirped.

Nya turned around and saw the four boys filing into the dining room behind Lloyd. Normally, they would be chattering up a blue streak, but they were silent.

Each of the four young boys sat by a cup. They stayed quiet, fiddling with their too-large clothing.

"Are we ready?" Sensei Wu asked, coming into the room.

Nya nodded. "I think so. Who wants to go first?"

None of the four boys moved for a long moment. They just stared at each other.

Then, slowly, hesitantly, Cole raised his hand just above his head. "I will."

"Are you sure? What if it doesn't work?" Kai ventured.

"It will work," Nya said more firmly than she believed it.

"I trust you," Cole said simply, stating more in that short sentence than he could in the long years that were about to pass. He picked up the cup gingerly, held it out in front of him and took a deep breath.

"Wait!" Zane blurted. All eyes turned to him, still unused to the sound of his voice. He blushed, searching for words. "...See you in a few?"

"Yeah! W-w-we'll see you in a few!" Jay echoed eagerly.

"See you in a few," Kai repeated.

Cole nodded and brought his cup to his lips, tilting it up. In one gulp, he swallowed the tea. Putting down the cup, he whispered back, "See you in a few."

A strange light flashed through the room, whiting out the vision of all the occupants. When it cleared, the chair by the teacup was empty.

"Cole!" Everyone shouted as one.

But before anyone could do anything, a voice groaned. A hand gripped the side of the table. And up came Cole, now wearing a hoodie that fit just right and a bewildered but content look on his matured face. He groaned again, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. "Okay. I take it back. That definitely WAS the weirdest mission we've ever been on."

"Cole!" Lloyd squealed. He leaped to Cole's side and hugged him. "I missed you! I missed you so, so much!"

"We all missed you," Nya added. She wasn't sure if she was laughing or crying. Both, she figured.

"I think I missed me too," Cole said slowly. "I- wow. Everything's coming together in my mind."

"Like how?" Nya questioned.

"It's like everything that just happened, did just happen, but also like it happened when I really was a kid. It's fuzzy and clear at the same time," Cole explained. He shook his head. "Yeah. Fuzzy and clear. It's weird."

"But it's okay?" Lloyd asked.

"Yeah. It's all okay," Cole stated. He turned to look at Kai, Jay, and Zane. "Don't worry, guys. It's okay."

"Good enough for me," Kai declared, and he gulped down the tea mixture in his cup.

A bright light flashed again and Kai was reeling in his seat, clothes fitting, smile on his face. "It's good to be back."

"W-we didn't even get to say 'see you in a few' to you!" Jay complained.

Nya barely even heard him. She flung herself at her big brother. "Kai! It's you!'

"Nya! It's me!" Kai sing-songed back teasingly, wrapping her up in a hug.

"Hey, Kai," Lloyd said with a big grin.

"Hey, Lloyd," Kai said back, smiling.

"Hey, Kai," Cole put forward.

"Yeah, yeah, hey to you too," Kai tossed back.

"Are you two ready?" Sensei Wu asked Jay and Zane.

Jay looked uncertain.

"At the same time?" Zane offered.

Jay looked a lot more certain. "At the same time. Yeah, okay. I can do that."

"On the count of three," Lloyd instructed. "One, two, three!"

Simultaneously, Jay and Zane tossed back their heads and poured all of the tea into their mouths, swallowing at the same time.

One more time, a bright light flashed through the room.

Jay and Zane, now normally sized, exchanged grins.

"We're back," Jay said smoothly, a little breathlessly. "Oh, we're back."

"We are back," Zane stated. He sounded almost choked up, Nya thought.

"Hey, Jay. Hey, Zane. How good of you to join us," Kai teased.

"Good of you to have us," Jay shot back. He looked around, a goofy look on his face. "What? No one else is going to have any tea? Nya? Lloyd? Sensei Wu? Didn't you guys want some tea too?"

"I've had enough tea to last me a lifetime," Lloyd sighed, but he was smiling.

"I'm good, thanks," Nya laughed.

"I, too, must sadly decline the tea offer," Sensei Wu chuckled.

Jay faked a pout. "Seriously? You guys aren't going to have some tea? Not even Sensei Wu? How rude. It's almost as if something weird is going on here."

"You're the something weird," Lloyd retorted.

"Oh, how mature of you," Jay teased, but he was smiling.

Lloyd grinned. "What, I'm the one who's supposed to be mature? You're the one who just grew like fifteen years in five seconds."

Everyone laughed at that.


	22. Some other beginning's end

**AN: Welcome to the twenty-second chapter of "Nature Versus Nurture!" This is it folks, over five years of work and this story's finally complete (except for a one shot with all the pieces that didn't make it into the story, including musings on what to write next and responses to reviews), and I'm so glad you all took this journey with me. The key song and its selection for this chapter is "Closing Time" by Semisonic, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."** **The other songs and their sections for this chapter are "Moving Past" by The Fold, "It's never easy to admit what you wanna be, your perfect picture may not match what you see, but you will get there eventually"; "When I Grow Up" by Matilda, "When I grow up, I will be brave enough to fight the creatures that you have to fight beneath the bed each night to be a grown-up"; and "Never Grow Up" by Taylor Swift, "I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone. So here I am in my new apartment in a big city they just dropped me off, it's so much colder than I thought it would be so I tuck myself in and turn my nightlight on. Wish I'd never grown up."**

* * *

"Hi, Dad. It's me," Cole said into the phone, feeling almost shy to be talking to his dad for the first time since being young again.

"Cole? Cole, is that you? The real you? Really?" His real father's voice came through, tinny from the phone line and from shock.

Cole grinned, marvelling at how lucky he was to have his dad. "It's really me, the real me. Thank you for coming to see me, and for letting me visit home, and for helping Wu, Nya, and Lloyd out with us, and for everything, really. Oh, and I'm sorry for any stress seeing the younger me put you through."

"You, no matter the age, will never stress me out," Lou proclaimed, sounding a little teary.

Cole laughed. "Aw, Dad, you flatter me, but that's not true."

"You're right," Lou admitted readily. "But that's not your fault. Being a father is stressful; it's just the way it is."

If anyone was nearby, they would've seen Cole's eyes grow distant and thoughtful.

"But! You're okay, and that's what matters, that's what always matters," Lou said, pushing forward with his train of thought. "You're okay. Cole, I'm so glad, you have no idea."

"Do you need to sing about it ?" Cole asked, only half joking.

"Can I?" Lou asked eagerly. "I know you've had mixed feelings in the past about-"

"You can," Cole interrupted. His voice softened. "I'd be happy to hear it."

"Oh, son!" Lou cried out, and he began humming softly in preparation.

* * *

Kai didn't say anything for the longest time when the shock of the whole situation hit. He just buried his face in Nya's shoulder and held her tightly.

"I lost you," he said finally, his voice trembling with unshed tears. "Nya, I never want to lose you again. Never again."

"And I don't want to lose you," Nya told him, her voice doing the same.

* * *

"Yeah, Mom, I'm fine, I am," Jay reassured, hugging his mother even as he answered her worried questions.

"Oh, we were so worried," Edna stated, running her hands through his hair fondly. "We know bein' a ninja is a big job, and sometimes weird things happen, but that was a little too weird for us."

"Who ya talkin' to, Edna?" Ed hollered from inside the trailer.

"It's Jay, Ed. It's our boy, our wonderful boy," Edna hollered back.

There was a loud clanging noise as if something metal and very large had been dropped from Ed's general direction.

"He's been washing the dishes over and over while you were, well, little," Edna explained in a hushed tone. "He was so worried, we were both so worried."

"Is that my little guy?" Ed said cheerfully, exiting the trailer. His eyes got very wide as he saw his son in Edna's arms. "It is! But he's big again! Oh, Jay!"

"Hey, Dad," Jay said almost as cheerfully, but there were tears in his eyes as his father rushed to him and embraced him.

* * *

"Is he okay, Uncle?" Lloyd asked quietly, valiantly not peeking through the doorway.

"I can hear you," Zane's voice drifted through the doorway.

"Sorry," Lloyd apologized, looking at his uncle. He pointed at himself, then into the room, for Wu, who nodded and stepped away.

"Hey, Gh- Zane. Man, it's weirdly hard getting back into the habit of calling you that," Lloyd said breezily, stepping into the room and looking around. He saw Zane sitting on the floor neatly in the middle of the room, a piece of paper in one hand and his falcon sitting on the other. Lloyd stepped closer and knelt beside him. "Are you doing okay? It's weird, when your body and your brain aren't entirely sure how well they fit together."

"It is… Weird," Zane agreed distantly, clasping his hand around the piece of paper before Lloyd could see what it was.

"So. How are you feeling about everything that happened?" Lloyd ventured.

"It was an experience," Zane said softly.

Lloyd laughed a little. "I bet. Tell me about it?"

* * *

The four boys, now teens, nearly men, stood gathered around the photo grasped in Zane's hand of four smiling boys, their old young selves, and the man they called father.

"I can't believe you somehow held onto that picture," Jay marvelled.

"What do we do with it?" Zane wondered.

"Well, we don't throw it away, that's for sure," Cole said firmly.

"Nobody said we were going to throw it away," Jay pointed out.

"Yeah, but at least one of you was thinking it," Cole retorted.

Jay did not dispute that statement. "So, what do we do? Whatever we do, we've got to do it quickly if we don't want Lloyd and Nya and Sensei seeing and thinking we're all stuck on this. They'll be in here any moment."

"I have an idea," Kai said slowly. "Can I have it for a moment?"

Zane handed it over.

Kai walked to the wall where the photographs from the day at Mega Monster Amusement Park were lined up. Carefully, he tucked the photo Zane had given him into the corner of one of the frames, so it was visible but not immediately noticeable. Kai took a step back and looked at his brothers. The three of them nodded, and Kai nodded back.

* * *

"Yes, yes, we'll move on the plan tomorrow," Lord Garmadon sighed. "Now leave me."

The Serpentine did as they were told, although Skales and Snappa lingered for a few minutes before they realized Lord Garmadon wasn't going to speak to them.

Slowly, Lord Garmadon walked to his room, all alone.

Once he was there, he shut the door behind him. Falling to his knees, he opened the drawer of his nightstand and pulled out a photograph showing four boys and himself, all looking unbelievably happy.

Lord Garmadon folded the photo up and held it to his heart.

Then he threw it in the garbage.

After a moment, he thought better of it. Pulling the photo out of the trash can and unfolding it, he carefully placed it in a photo frame and placed the photo frame on the nightstand next to his bed.

* * *

Two photographs, one on a wall, one on a night stand, both in picture frames, told the tale of four boys and the man they once called father and all the things they had lost and gained. The photographs were in different places, but they were the same.


End file.
